The DOOM of Earth Bet [DOOM/Worm]

Inq. Halbread · Dec 3, 2016

Hello SV! This is another story that I want to crosspost over here so you guys can see it.
This story is pretty violent so I'm slightly worried that it may break that gore rule as it is a Doom cross and thus suitably violent.. Thankfully, the first chapter was approved and hopefully the others will as well but I can't promise that.

Either way, I'm hoping for the best and here is the first chapter.
Enjoy the writing!

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Warning: This is Dark. Do not read if you hate gore, dark themes or indiscriminate death

Brockton Bay
Winslow High School
Jan 15, 2011

First Incursion

Madison Clements had thought today was going to be a good day. The prank had gone off without a hitch. Taylor was stuck in her Locker and after a few hours, she'd be let out with not much harm done except to her dignity and pride. If she was honest with herself, Madison was uncomfortable with the whole "locker" idea, it seemed very cruel for Taylor to be trapped in a such a small locker with whatever Sophia and Emma had filled it with for several hours, considering no one she knew actually had any malice towards the girl. But she couldn't speak up and risk he precarious social position she had just to stop some "harmless teasing". Madison had begun to not believe Emma's word for their torment of Taylor, in her eyes it had gone far past teasing and into merciless bullying.

But honestly, what could she do? In an attempt to ensure she wasn't at the bottom of the complex, school social hierarchy, she had tied her entire school life to Emma Barnes and Sophia Hess who were the two of the most popular girls in school who had no gang or drug connections of which there were frightfully few. Emma was a social butterfly and Sophia was a star athlete, it wasn't a hard decision to make to try and fit in with them to try and avoid being bullied. So she had changed her style, switching comfortable shirts and pants to strapless tops and skirts, and she had forced herself to be more "cute".
It had worked, for the most part. Emma and Sophia had welcomed her with open arms, letting her into their social circle. She was popular and her school life was firmly secured, no gang groupie or asshole could get her now.

Too bad that it was absolute shit.
Emma and Sophia had turned out to be sadistic to the extreme. Teasing, playing pranks, tripping down stairs, insults... There was almost nothing they wouldn't do to prove that they were "stronger" than the people they bullied. It made Madison sick, but she stuck through it. She smiled and pretended to enjoy it and take part as well, all because she had seen what would happen to her if she didn't. It had continued like that for a while, Madison just getting through the day, everyday and hoping that whatever those two did, that it wasn't too bad.

And then Taylor Hebert happened.

Madison didn't know what had happened to make Emma and Sophia hate her so much but it clearly showed. Months of bullying and harassment, worse pranks that they had ever done before. If Emma and Sophia had made Madison uncomfortable then, they outright terrified her now. They had shown a side to them that Madison had originally associated with people like Hookwolf and Lung. Cold, sadistic and ruthless were what those two were to Taylor Hebert. Thanks to the high school version of a smear campaign, Taylor's fellow students now saw her as almost everything undesirable, even if the different views were nonsensical and contradictory. Madison saw something different. She saw what could happen to her.

The constant bullying that Taylor underwent was exactly what Madison wanted to avoid and she felt sick everyday that she helped Emma do it to her. And everyday she saw what new torment they had planned for Taylor, her fear of speaking up grew. The bullying was obvious, no matter what the teachers or Blackwell said, but somehow Emma and Sophia had enough leverage over the whole school, including the actual faculty, that everyone essentially ignored her plight. The students did so because they didn't care, were oblivious or just were scared of their reputation while the teachers did so for some nebulous reason that just made her believe speaking up wouldn't solve anything. At this rate, only a signed confession would get anything done and while normally Madison could, and would, do so...

It didn't look like it would do much.

They say that you didn't see the corruption until you'd try and get something done and you didn't see how much the 1% owned until you were looking out their penthouse window. She had seen both. Taylor hadn't taken her torment laying down, not by a long shot. Early on, she had reported every harassment, every instance of bullying and probably recorded it all as well, Probably still was, but everytime she did there was always some excuse to why they would do nothing. The excuses were long, varied and technically true, which just made Madison more convinced that Emma and Sophia had something on the faculty that made them ignore the bullying. Not to mention that the bullying always got harsher after every report Taylor did and all that did was convince Madison that speaking up would not only accomplish nothing, her life would be hell immediately afterwards.

So what could she do? The Answer? Simply continue on and pretend to be the adorable little hanger on that agrees with everything that Emma Barnes does.
It was the choice that kept her school life safe. It was the choice that would ensure that she didn't end up like Taylor. So why did she feel that it wasn't the right choice...

This is what had kept her mind occupied as she sat in the cafeteria that day. It was better than wondering what horrible thing Sophia had stocked Taylor's locker with, especially when Madison had asked that Sophia had said that it was "appropriate".

...

Madison was suddenly thrown out of her Moral questioning when she suddenly felt something happening to the cafeteria. She suddenly felt tense. She felt fear. She felt as if the air itself was trying to rip her to shreds and would actually enjoy her suffering.

She looked around the room and she saw that everyone else had also noticed the change. Emma next to her by the cafeteria table looked scared, more scared than Madison had ever seen her while Sophia across from her looked... Excited? The other students in the cafeteria seemed to edge on the scared side of the spectrum, maybe because they all realized what the change probably meant.
A Cape the school seemed to be thinking. It wasn't that big of an assumption, Winslow was shit and it was only a matter of time before some kid with powers decided to go Carrie on it.

The tension was only going up and the oppressive feeling was only getting worse, some of the more sensitive boys and girls had even broken down in tears at the sheer hatred that filled the room.

And then, with a flash of red light. A creature entered the room.

It was the size of a man, coloured a light brown and black. On each black had sat three fingers and a thumb, sharp nails similar to claws on each digit tip. It was hunched over, the legs bent almost completely. Its tough hard skin covered a smooth head while two, glowing red eyes stared out hatefully from its permanently sneering face. The skin around it's mouth was black with no lips, showing off every sharp tooth in it's mouth. After closer inspection, it looked like all the brown segments were some sort of organic armor. small spikes and hard shell was covered the creature, including on it's eyes, two horn like protrusions sweeping back as two mandible-like protrusions jutted out from the chin.

Although it had an intimidating appearance, that wasn't what had scared the cafeteria into silence. The way it looked at the gathered students was not the way an animal would look at prey or how a human that hated you would look. No, it was wrong, demonic. The way those glowing eyes stared at the scared high school students and staff was that it would kill them all...

For nothing but it's own enjoyment.

They stayed like that for a second. The humans and the creature just staring at each other, one in fear and the other in hate. The stillness was broken when the creature lunged out with it's right claw at a nearby student, ripping into the unfortunate boy's chest.

Then, as the beast decided to gather fire in it's other hand and throw it at a student, all hell broke loose as everyone in the cafeteria screamed.
And as more flashes of red light filled the room, Madison Clements reflected that, despite her best attempts, her life had gone to hell anyway.
And if she was unlucky, she might be going there soon.

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Jack Wells looked at his sacrificial circle with a feeling of pride. It had taken a lot of time to do everything to how the Masters wanted him to. It took him even longer to find allies who would help him in his journey to enrich humanity. The amount of people who reacted negatively to his plans was... troubling but at least he kept his knife clean after silencing those who would want to stop his plans.

The circle gave off a warm, hellish light. The body of the sacrifice had already been disintegrated by the energies the Masters were pushing through it and the only evidence that it existed in the first place was the blood that covered the floor that reflected the light that the diagram of the circle was emitting. He gazed lazily at the other sacrifices that he and his fellow worshipers had gathered. There were male, female, students, staff, gangers, dealers... all of them were equal for the purpose that they were chosen for and all of them were scared of their fate to be sacrificed for the glory of the Masters. Honestly, getting the necessary sacrifices had been the easiest part as they had simply been gathered with little care to evidence or subtlety.

It wasn't as if the authorities would matter soon anyway.

Suddenly a host of screams resonated throughout the school, making the sacrifices whimper and fidget within their restraints. While the captives felt fear, the screams of terror made Jack and the other cultists' hearts soar. The Masters were here at last. He wanted nothing more to fall in supplication to the Masters who had already made the trip from Hell but unfortunately he still had his duties to perform. The way was not completely open and he would have to change that.

"Bring another sacrifice! Our Masters will not brook delay on their glorious conquest!" he shouted to his fellow worshipers. In response, they eagerly picked up a sacrifice at random, an older senior girl this time who made scared noises from behind the tape on her mouth. At one point, Jack would have felt pity or even horror at these sacrifices' fates especially as he used to be a student but that was before the Masters illuminated him to the true destiny of humanity.

As they threw her into the circle, he began intoning the incantation the Masters had shared with him to open the way. Jack had work to do and wouldn't stop until there was Hell on Earth.

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I just sat there.
In the hallway, covered in blood with torn and broken lockers, some of them on fire, I just sat there.

I used to want to be a hero, to help people. But now all i could do was sit in this hallway while my fellow students died.
Mr Shannon, a lazy security guard that worked for the school, was lying motionless next to Mr Quinlin's classroom.
He was on fire, his bald head having already turned from a reddened white to charcoal black as the fire did it's work with an almost unnatural ferocity
I knew he was dead, the fact he was in two pieces of meat told me that.

Alyssa, a student that was once bullied by the E88 and ABB for her dark skin, and Sophia for being bullied until she stood up for herself, was lying further down the hallway against one of the lockers. She was dead, her throat had been torn open and the bleeding had stopped, there was no more blood left to bleed.
Jason, Empire 88 and a classmate, was lying slightly away from Alyssa. His skin, showing his mixed European and almost unnoticeable Latino heritage, was speckled with crimson from the canyon in his chest. It looked like he had tried to protect Alyssa before he died, and then she did.

The hallway was filled with similar stories. People of all kinds, where there would normally be hatred and tension, united in an effort to survive.
Before they died that is.

And here I just sat, Knee-deep in the Dead.

I let out a small "Heh". Who knew I could get so poetic?
I couldn't find the will to find someplace to hide or escape, so I just sat there.
I must be in shock, I thought to myself How else am I so calm with so many dead people around?
It was weird. I knew I should be panicking, I should be scared.
So why am I angry?

I was angry. Since this... catastrophe started, it was like the air itself wanted you to die, but not just die, It wanted you to have the most agonizing death you could.
A normal person would've felt fear at the sheer oppressive atmosphere, but a part of me snarled at it. That part of me yelled and screamed at the idea of dying, of these things killing me and that part got louder for every dead person I saw.
It didn't make sense to me, I had seen the monsters that were killing everyone and the other students had screamed and ran in fear, trembling and crying from them. Why didn't I feel the same? When they had attacked, I was shocked. I saw people i knew dying around me and I didn't want to hide or scream in fear.
I wanted to kill them.
I guess it was the fight part of a "flight or fight" response. I didn't even know I had a side to me that was violent enough to seriously consider killing.
Was i still me? It was hard to feel anything past the numbness, besides the anger of course. Even as I sat in the deserted hallway, I could feel the urge to fight, to kill growing stronger.

I had seen crime before, everyone in Brockton Bay has, but I had never felt this way before. It was all so different, the criminals of the Bay, capes and otherwise, had so many reasons to do what they did.
But this was just slaughter. There wasn't any reason that these people were dead, because these creatures, these demons, needed no reason to kill. That violent piece of me rallied against the slaughter, the senseless cruelty that these demons were perpetuating.

But so many people were dead. It wasn't hard to imagine that the PRT and the Protectorate had already been called and would deal with the demons soon.
Was there a reason to fight after so much had been lost?

"Oh my God." A soft female voice caught my attention. I turned to look at the source of the voice and saw a girl staring at where Alyssa and Jason were lying. I recognized her, she was one of my classmates, Bethany I think. She looked different from this morning though, her white strapped top had drops of red on it, most likely when blood had splattered near her and there was a single gash down the length of her arm.

She looked away from the corpses and turned her head in my direction, horror and fear still written on her face. Then her eyes caught sight of me and she She looked at me in shock. I looked back at her in a calm numbness. Her features turned to relief and she ran towards me.
"OhthankGodsomeoneisalive" She kept repeating as she ran towards me. As she got closer I could see that blood had splattered against her face and that there were tear marks down her face with new tears already on their way.

She ran up to me and tried to pull me up by my arm. She succeeded but stopped when she saw my calm face. "Come on, we have to go." She pleaded to me in a fearful tone. Her face tensed up quickly, as though she was trying to remember something. "...Greg? Greg, we need to hide!" she pleaded. Why was she trying to get me to go along with her?
That question would have to go unanswered because as she looked at something past me , she screamed.

I whirled around and I saw something that used to be a person. It looked like a corpse, probably was, that had been left out in the sun too long. The skin was dried out and gray. The figure had withered away until it was almost skeletal. The eyes had sunken so far back into it's head, if they were still there at all, I couldn't see them. Despite it being withered, It was still deformed with a large growth around the shoulder. It was wearing the scraps of a security uniform but besides that, there were no distinguishing features of what it used to be. It growled, the sound coming from a dried throat, through teeth stained with blood. It looked exactly on how you would imagine an undead or zombie. It shambled forward towards Bethany, looking solely at her and ignoring me, like it was drawn to her fear.

Considering her scream, she might have just irritated the zombie however.
Bethany quickly let go of my arm, and scrambled away. The sheer feeling of numbness and calm kept me from joining her and the buried anger wanted me to actually flail towards the zombie in an attempt to kill it. The end result of my emotional turmoil was that I just stood there, a neutral expression on my face, watching the situation play out in front of me.

A small part of me noted that the situation was rather comical as it seemed that the zombie was so slow that you could actually outrun it at a fast walking pace. If Bethany just turned around and jogged away, it would lose sight of her extremely quickly. Unfortunately, Bethany wasn't doing that.
Apparently the fear of seeing a reanimated corpse had been too much for her and she had fallen to the floor and started crawling away. Or the fact that the zombie had somehow sneaked up on us without even trying might have given her a fright?

Honestly, being in shock really messed with your perspective on things.

The zombie was preparing to lunge for her, Bethany still hadn't gotten far away enough.
I wanted to do something, but my arms felt like they were made of lead. The zombie was right in front of me now, still intent on a screaming Bethany.
I wanted to do something, anything.
I felt angry at myself for not being able to not do anything.

Then I could feel my rage spike through my unnatural calm.

Before I knew it, I had grabbed the zombie mid lunge. I had underestimated the strength of the zombie though, and we went flailing in a tangle of limbs to the side of the hallway. When we landed, I felt my head slam against the hard floor, stunning me. I felt my vision go blurry and I tried to focus my vision again. I felt weight shifting on top of me and a skull-shaped thing entered my vision. I decided to keep it away from me, and as my vision cleared I saw that it was probably the right decision. The zombie was now on top of me, trying and thankfully failing to grab my throat with it's teeth. The constantly gnashing teeth dripping blood onto my pasty skin and blond hair.
It was all I could do to keep the zombie from killing me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bethany stare at us with a mixture of shock and fear. I think she really thought she was going to die right then, and now she was watching someone else fighting off the death that she thought she was going to have.

Regardless, I needed to deal with the zombie trying to kill me and the, now louder, part of me yelling to rip it apart wasn't particularly helpful.

Maybe I can... I thought until I heard Bethany scream again.

I looked past the struggling zombie to see one of those demons stalking towards Bethany. It's red eyes gleamed with pure cruelty as it stalked forward slowly, savoring every fear-filled scream that ripped itself from Bethany's throat as she crawled away from the demon. It gave a hissing chuckle as it passed me and the zombie, it's eyes filled with disdain whether for me or the zombie, I didn't know.
That's when it hit me.

They really weren't doing this for some rational reason.
All these people were dead because...
...Because they just wanted to.
And now another person I knew was going to die...
Just because they wanted to kill...

I felt my shock and unnatural calm break.
I felt myself fill with RAGE
They needed to die.

I turned my attention to the zombie that was still trying to kill me. I had heard that skulls were surprisingly fragile.
I grabbed the zombie's head with both my hands and Smashed it against the floor.
The zombie offered no resistance, it didn't have enough balance to, and it's head smashed against the ground with a sharp crunch. The zombie stopped moving near instantly.

I shoved it off of me, getting to my knees. I needed a weapon before I could attack the demon.
There!
There was a pistol in a holster on the former zombie's hip.
I grabbed it and aimed it at the demon's head, similarly to how the people in the video games do it. I fired and a deafening shot erupted from the gun with a pain from my arm, unused to the recoil on the gun.
The shot had missed, the bullet digging into the brown carapace near of where I guessed ears would be on a person. It shrieked, stunned from the unexpected pain and noise. It stumbled towards the lockers on the side of the hall.

I Charged at it, intent on killing it. I shouldered it into the lockers, causing a shriek of pain from the monster. I proceeded to grab the thing by it's head and smash it repeatedly against the locker.
I Smashed, and smashed until with a gratifying crack, the demon stopped moving.
I dropped the demon and looked towards Bethany, she was staring at me in shock and a little bit of fear but otherwise she was fine.
I looked at the pistol I had gotten from the zombie. Admittedly I knew nothing about guns except that a pistol was on the low end of the firepower spectrum, but it would kill demons.
That was all I needed to know.

I went to check for more bullets on the zombie but as I did, my mind was turning.
Did I need to kill the demons?
Yes. I felt nothing but anger towards them and unlike earlier, there was no shock to stop me from acting.
Was it a good idea?
Probably not, no. Whether it was a good idea or not was irrelevant. This rage was a part of me and I knew I couldn't let these creatures get away with it. This wouldn't just blow over. The demons needed to die otherwise more people would die.
That meant I couldn't justify not trying to kill the demons.

One important question made me stop. Was this rage really me? It could be some Master who triggered and was directing people to attack these creatures to protect themselves.
It sounded reasonable, but it also sounded wrong. It felt like this rage was asleep inside me for a long time and it was a part of me now that it wasn't buried by other things.
And even if it was a Master, these things were still killing people and if I could save these people then I don't think I'll mind much.
I shook my head. A Mastered person can't check himself for being Mastered. I thought, that was Master tip 101.

In the end, it didn't matter much though. Deep down, I needed to kill these demons for what they have already done. I needed to Rip and Tear until my job was done.
I finally found the ammo I was looking for and put it into my Jean pocket. I turned back to Bethany.
"You need to find someplace to hide. It's not safe here" I told her. She just stared at me with her mouth gaping, she still seemed to have problems believing what I had done and if I wasn't so focused on going out and killing the demons then I wouldn't have believed it either.

Who would've thought that Greg Veder would be the one to volunteer to kill the mass murdering demons invading Winslow. But, to be honest, at the moment I didn't care what people thought of me, there were demons to kill and I needed to kill them. As I turned to go, I heard Bethany speak up, "Wait!" she shouted. She spoke softly as she continued. "What are you going to do?"

I turned to face her and showed her the pistol as I pulled the gun's slide back. I looked her in the eyes and said, "I'm going to kill the demons."
Then I turned back around and walked down the hallway, There were demons that needed to die... and I was the one who was going to kill them.

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There you go. I hope I can share the other chapters here as well.
Please tell me what you think.
Comments and Criticisms are always welcome.

Inq. Halbread · Dec 3, 2016

Good News SV! The remaining chapters of the story have been greenlit. So I can post them here.
Here is the next chapter. Once again, Comments and Criticism is welcome

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Winslow High School
Random corridor

If there was one thing that I didn't expect when I had decided to kill the demons was that it would be so... So...

So easy.

In my hunt through this part of the school, I had mostly found zombies. A lot of them were similar to the first one I had killed, all of them looking like withered corpses, wearing tattered clothing of their old lives and some of them had sharp claws. Some wore tatters of uniforms, some wore ripped suits but so many had ripped hoodies, tattered dresses, and destroyed gang uniforms.
Part of me was horrified at the fact I was massacring my former classmates but I took comfort in the idea that they looked pretty beyond saving as I stomped on one unfortunate zombie's neck, severing it with a crunch and decapitating the zombie.

These zombies were surprisingly easy to kill. Yeah, shooting them in the body took a while but everyone knew you just didn't shoot zombies in the chest. You shot them in the head. Even in the real world, this proved to be completely sage advice as a shot to the head dropped these ones just as well. When you took in the fact that they didn't dodge and moved at what seemed to be a snail's pace, then making them re-dead was pathetically easy. Even coming to blows with them was an easy victory despite their surprising strength and claws. Their swings were so clumsy and their lunges and bites were so obvious that even someone like me, who had not done much physical activity at all, could avoid those strikes pretty easily. Whatever had made the zombies seemed to make them a lot more fragile than I guess a normal human was.

Either that or it was quite surprising on how the average spine reacted with being slammed into the thin part of a locker door.
Hmm. One would think that I would have been more upset at musing on how easy it was to kill my former, fellow man but It was at least thirty minutes and over twenty zombies later and I could see that, whatever they had been, they were remorseless monsters now.

One thing that did confuse me was that whenever I killed one of these zombies, they would disintegrate... Somehow...
At least the Janitors won't have to clean up that much,I thought. It would really suck to have to go looking for the bits of that zombie that had been crushed by that collapsed locker.

My internal musings were interrupted as I heard a growl to my left. Looking in that direction, I saw another three of the zombies slowly shambling towards me.

I immediately turned towards them and raised my looted pistol.
BANG
BANG
I fired twice, pain shooting up my arm from the recoil. A one-handed grip was not the best for shooting a pistol with, but considering I didn't know how to use a two-handed grip at all, it was better than potentially messing up both of my arms. Besides, The recoil has started to hurt less and less as I killed these monsters.

Two of the zombies, apparently too stupid to dodge, took their assigned bullets directly in their heads. They started to collapse, undead muscles fighting with the lack of coordination from their now re-dead brains. I didn't pay attention to them however, I was running towards the last one.

It was better to save ammo after all.

As I reached the zombie, I felt my now ever-present anger erupt. My free fist flew and punched the zombie in its withered stomach area, guarded only by a once tight t-shirt. The force behind my punch stunned it, allowing me to Crush its ankle with a kick. It fell to the ground in an undignified heap. I raised my foot above its head and Stomped down. With a crack, the front of the skull collapsed and the zombie went still.

Once again, the hallway was quiet and I enjoyed the feeling that crushing the zombie gave me. It was weird, but every time I had killed a demon close up, I had this feeling of strength. I felt stronger, I felt faster and I felt the multitude of wounds I had received feel better. Sometimes, when I had checked, I saw that some of the wounds were missing, even though I could have sworn I had actually gotten them. I wasn't complaining about this, though. I knew that I personally didn't have powers, but it didn't matter to me if a parahuman was following me around, healing me, or if killing the demons was actually doing it.
All it was doing was helping me put an end to this.

Again my musings were cut off by a large noise, but this time, it was a gunshot. I dived into one of the nearby classrooms and killed the zombies in there quickly.

Ah, I mused. There are the other zombies.

Unfortunately, whatever had been reanimating the dead, wasn't content to simply stick to one type of zombie. I had almost mistaken them for human until I had seen the gouged out chest. And the Glowing red eyes. And the loud roar followed by a procession of bullets. Frankly, they were rather annoying. These zombies were smarter than the others and all the ones I had found used guns. They also seemed to be capable of focusing on one thing for more than a minute, which seemed amazing compared to their shambling relatives.

There was one good thing, I thought as a bullet hit the door to the classroom I had ran inside. They still aren't that bright.

I had only killed about ten so far, but they seemed to have very little patience, they didn't dodge and they were excessively bad shots. However, I did notice that essentially all of this type of zombie were former gang members or security guards.

Did this mean that they were this bad shots in life as well? I asked myself.
Ignoring my internal questions, I looked at my current opponents. There were currently two.

One of them looked similar to the one's I had killed earlier. He was about as tall as me, Bald, Asian and wearing Azn Bad Boys colours. His skin was deathly pale, the glowing red eyes creating a nice contrast with it. He didn't have much of a chest anymore, a large amount of flesh missing from it. It was to the point that I could see his ribs and even a small amount of spine.

The other one was a surprise to me. She was a tall, blond girl that I recognised as one of the girls that hang around with Emma Barnes. Her skin was almost ashen with a large chunk of skin on the cheek missing, exposing the teeth underneath. She wore a blood splattered, white mini skirt with a tight, sleeveless, light blue top that explained where the blood came from, through a bloody hole in her chest, staining the shirt. She was also barefoot, the zombie most likely removing the high-heels she probably died in with an outfit like that.
Unlike the gang zombie, the girl held a surprisingly large pistol in both of her hands in a way that felt like she knew what she was doing. The difference in apparent skill was amazing, the gang zombie holding his gun in a loose, one-handed grip, despite the bloodthirsty look in their eyes being the same.

They were both steadily advancing to where I was hiding, too cautious to charge towards a possible trap and too bloodthirsty to wait for me to come out. A large fire behind them giving their movement a sinister air.

They didn't have to wait long.

I exploded out of cover, full sprint and brought the gun holding my pistol to aim at the female zombie as I believed that she was the most dangerous one of the two. As soon as I had run out of the room, they had both started shooting. My suspicions were soon proven true as she managed to hit my shoulder, making another hole in my black jacket, while her partner shot wildly, hitting the walls and floor. I fought against the pain that had engulfed my shoulder and readjusted my aim. I fired the pistol and the Female zombie's head jerked back, the zombie collapsing like a puppet with its strings cut.
Smiling at my victory, I aimed at the Asian zombie and pulled the trigger. A Click was heard instead of a bang. I had no more bullets for this pistol so I just dropped it. I was only a few steps away from the zombie anyway, I could kill it without a pistol.

I was only a step away as the zombie fired again and I felt a blossoming pain in my chest. Absently noting that a shot like that could probably be fatal and would put me out of commission on a normal day, I fought through the pain and knocked away the zombie's gun with a backhand. I Punched it in the face and I felt its jaw break under my hand. It turned back to me and growled, the moderate fire I had only noticed now was causing the eyes to take on a sinister glow. I didn't hesitate.

I reached with both hands into the zombie's wound, grabbing the spine. Then, with a moment of resistance, I Ripped the spine apart.
And I tore the zombie in two.

Now in two halves, the zombie fell to the ground. The top half of the zombie still moved, however, and it made a sound as though it was whining in pain.
I felt no pity for it, it was willing to kill anyone it came across. And so, as though I was kicking a piece of garbage, I shoved it into the inferno with my foot.

I turned around and walked to the other zombie to see if it had anything worth taking, ignoring the sounds the now-flaming zombie made as it died.
Another good thing about these zombies is that they are sources of ammo. I mused to myself.

I searched around for a while and found the Female zombie's gun. It vaguely looked like a Desert Eagle that I had seen in one of the FPS games I had played last year. I searched the zombie and discovered that it was wearing a backpack that would have looked cute if it hadn't been stained with blood. Inside, I had found bullets, a lot of bullets. That was good, I was getting tired of having to pick up a new pistol every time I emptied the one I was currently holding. After taking the magazines of bullets and putting them in my pockets, both Jeans and jacket pockets, I stood up and looked around.

The corridor was quiet again, the two zombies were dead and not disintegrating, similarly to the other gun zombies I had killed, although one was on its way to becoming ash. The zombie-fueled fire crackled calmly. The walls were surprisingly clean and there were only a few bodies that I could see. Not seeing anything noteworthy or related to something I should deal with, I decided to move on.

I didn't see the two bullets that were lying on the floor, covered in blood, as I walked away.

As I walked down the hall, I reflected on all that I had killed so far. Zombies were the most common monsters by far, If this was a video game I'd say that they were used to essentially keep you busy in between more challenging enemies. Both types of Zombies were easy to deal with if you knew how. The moment I had a gun, the withered ones were essentially harmless and the Gun zombies were so reckless that they were normally only a threat if you were as well. One thing I had noticed was when I had faced both types together was that trying to cover shoot was suicide.
The Gun zombies would keep you pinned down with bullets while the others would slowly move towards you as a group. And if there was one thing zombie games had taught me was that you didn't want to get stuck in a mob of hungry zombies. So that meant I should do the logical thing and treat this situation like an old-school FPS.

I never stuck to cover, I never stayed in one place for long and mobility was always a priority. It may have seemed like madness in a fight where there were real guns being fired at you and you couldn't really dodge bullets going at slightly slower than the speed of sound...
But I hadn't lost a fight yet, so I must be doing something right.
The zombies couldn't handle a moving target and they couldn't handle chasing someone significantly faster than a walking pace, both things I had taken advantage of.
Part of me was horrified that I was treating a life or death situation like a video game, but a large part of me was quoting the phrase "If it's stupid but it works, then it isn't stupid."

The demons I had come to calling "Imps", they were another reason that staying in one place was a bad idea. I had only faced two since the one I had killed nearby Bethany, but each was a fight for my life. Most of the pistols I had found didn't have the stopping power to break through the demon's natural armor, they hurt the things but I would have had to rely on precise shots in between the Natural armor or beating it to death. Both of them risky. Firstly, they were armoured and I wasn't. That meant I would have to be more careful with my shots and avoid getting hit. They knew this and thus, made it their mission in life to harass me. They threw fireballs (that I could dodge) but they also tried to gore me with their claws (which was a lot harder to dodge). They were agile and intelligent and they were essentially everything that the zombies weren't.

What really frustrated me was that they weren't even that tough. I had managed to get a bullet past the armour once and it had almost completely died from that, so the problem was that the guns I had were too weak to get through the bone and my arms were too weak to crush that same bone. Hopefully, the large pistol I had picked up from that zombie would allow me to kill the imps a lot more quickly and with less hassle.

As I reached an intersection I heard a low growl to my right. I saw a Gun zombie lying on it's back, part of the ceiling had collapsed and had trapped it against the floor. It struggled weakly against the wreckage pinning it to the floor, oblivious to the metal rod that had impaled it. What had drawn my attention, though, was the weapon lying just out of its reach. It was a pump action shotgun. I approached the zombie and it got even more frantic in its attempts to get free, staining its E88 uniform with even more blood. When I come to be a few steps away, it gave up on getting free and focused on trying to grab me. I ignored it and picked up the fallen weapon. I felt a grin creep onto my face. I still knew nothing about guns, but the shotgun felt powerful and that made me happy deep inside for some reason. Maybe it would help with the imps?

Again, my musings were interrupted by a noise but this time, it was a high pitched roar than one that came from a human throat.
Speak of the demon, and he shall appear. I silently thought to myself, grin not loosening from my face at all.
Come get me.

The imp skidded to a halt into the middle of the hall from around the corner. After it stopped, It faced me fully with sheer menace in its crouched posture. It roared at me, hate in its glowing eyes and a sneer on its features. It thought it was scary. I thought it was cute.

It charged, forgoing any fireballs and straight attempting to eviscerate me with its claws.
I waited for it, my new shotgun aiming in its direction as it ran towards me. When it was merely a few steps away, I stepped to the side and communicated my displeasure with it by shooting it in the face. With a loud bang from my shotgun, Its head practically evaporated and the body slid past me.

My grin turned savage. You and me, I thought to the shotgun, are going to be great friends.
My grin evaporated as I realised that this shotgun would be one of my only friends and that significantly brought down my mood.

I turned to the zombie that was still trapped underneath the rubble, It was still trying and failing to escape and tearing itself to ribbons in the process. I went and stood above it. It shifted its attention to me and tried to reach for me. It was too far away however and ended up flailing its bloodstained, pale arms at me. Its eyes still held the bloodlust of its fellows even though a part of its bald head had cracked open.

"I'm sorry, you know," I said to the zombie, or maybe to who it used to be. "You were probably a piece of shit. No doubt about it considering you joined the Empire." I paused and looked at my feet. "It feels weird talking to a dead guy. I need to say this to someone. Aaaand you don't seem to be going anywhere, soo." I looked back at it. "You don't deserve this. No one does. Even if Winslow sucked, these people didn't deserve to die like this."

I raised my shotgun at its head. "So, for what its worth, I'm sorry. And I'm going to kill the things that did this."
I fired the gun and the zombie's head exploded.

I checked the area for ammo and found a lot for my shotgun. As I was leaving I heard distant gunshots and explosions.
It seemed that someone had joined the party.
But, for the moment, I still had demons to kill.

I pumped the shotgun.

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Earlier
PRT APC 026
On-route to Winslow High

Captain Bill Renard of the PRT was not having a good day.

Some lunatic cape had set some creatures loose and were massacring the students and staff of Winslow High School. That bit of information could ruin anyone's day but it was especially bad for the men and women of the PRT. This was just another example of why capes were so dangerous to everyone around them. Trigger events were common knowledge in the PRT, the worst day of a parahuman's life where they got super powers and possibly severe mental disorders, but no trigger event could justify this in Renard's eyes. To him, this was just another showing of how dangerous capes were, they thought of nothing but of themselves and what they wanted and damn anyone that may get hurt. Yes, there were exceptions to this rule, like most of the heroes in the protectorate, but you just had to take one look outside to see that there weren't many exceptions at all. There was a reason that the heroes were always outnumbered by the villains after all.

But now, thanks to Shadow Stalker, the PRT could put a stop to this before the tragedy got any worse. Unfortunately, there weren't any of the Protectorate nearby to respond except for Armsmaster and it was going to be some time until he could make it to the school. But as he looked around at the heavily armed and armored PRT officers inside the PRT issue Armored Personnel Car, Renard felt that they could probably deal with this situation without the Protectorate.

"Listen up!" Renard yelled, the officers in the APC paying immediate attention to him. "As you know, We are here to resolve the situation at Winslow High. We have received intel that the situation is lethal and has resulted in at least a hundred fatalities according to our Thinker support."
"Sir," spoke up one of the officers in the back, wearing the heavy blue riot armor that everyone else wore, leaving her almost unrecognisable except for her slightly shorter height. "What are the rules of engagement sir?" Lieutenant Cheryl Atkinson asked?
"We are going in lethally. No foam launchers for this mission. The Director sees our priority as, and I agree, to save as many lives as possible, as quickly as possible. Thus, we don't waste time protecting a mass murderer, no matter what age they are."
Renard's explanation got nods from all the officers. It made no sense to risk civilian lives to try and non-lethally apprehend someone who didn't care about those lives. If they came quietly, then it was good. If they didn't...

Well, no one would miss them.

Soon enough, Renard felt the APC come to a stop. The other officers, feeling the same, got up from their seats and did a last minute check on their weapons. Most of them had different models of assault rifles while a few of them checked their chosen shotguns and even fewer were strapping riot shields to their arms. Atkinson even had an impressive SPAS 15 shotgun.
After a second, the last minute checks were finished and the officers got into position to storm out of the APC. Renard felt a surge of pride in his officers, they were always so professional even in the face of such a tense situation. Renard signaled to his troops, and as one they stormed out of the APC. Outside was deceptively calm, Renard's APC was not the only one there and each one's complement of PRT officers was disembarking simultaneously. All in all, there were four APCs, over a hundred PRT troops and an eerily quiet school grounds.

"Alright people, form up!" Renard shouted to the officers. After everyone had formed up into ranks, then Renard continued. "We will divide the school into sectors. Standing orders are to protect the students at all costs. Non-lethal is not recommended."
"Sir, Yes Sir!" the officers collectively, answered.
"Lieutenant Fawkes, Your squad will create a perimeter around the school. Lieutenant Dawson, Your squad will take the western side. Lieutenant Atkinson, your squad will take the East side and Lieutenant Patel, Your squad will accompany me to search for the hostile Parahuman on the third floor. We will breach together and we will split up after entry."
"Sir, yes sir!"
"Good, Move out men!"

As one, the PRT officers got into formation and converged to the main entrance while Lieutenant Fawkes organised his officers to secure the grounds.
As the officers got half way to the main entrance, Renard shouted, "Hold!". The officers all stopped simultaneously, all of them holding their weapons towards the school entrance while their eyes scanned the crumbling and dirty walls of the three-floored high-school.
He could just barely hear it, but there was definitely something happening behind the closed door of the main entrance of the school. It was faint, but he could hear... screaming?

All of a sudden, the entrance burst open and a horde of students of all types ran out. All of them looked like they might have shit their pants collectively.

And seeing what followed them, Renard couldn't blame them.

It was a horde of withered corpses but was still fleshy as though their flesh had gone necrotic. They were wearing the tattered remains of clothes of all shapes and sizes. Anyone might have thought that these were more of the creatures they heard about from Shadow Stalker, but Renard, with over five years of experience in the PRT, knew that it wasn't the case.
They are the students... he thought. Something had happened to turn them into these creatures, possibly related to the oppressive feeling in the air.

One of the students hadn't made it far enough from his "zombified" peers and the assembled PRT officers were treated to a disturbing view of one of the zombies lunging at him and tearing his throat out.
"Shit!" Renard exclaimed. He toggled his radio. "Fawkes, secure the students. Get them organised for emergency services!" toggling his radio off, he continued. "Everyone else, pick a target and prepare to fire on my orders!"

He didn't need to hear any confirmation of his order being heard. They were the PRT and they would do their job to save these people. As the officers took aim, Renard took aim with his M4 assault rifle at a particular zombie that seemed to have flesh growing into its tattered Gang uniform, the colours saturated by all the blood and it also had particularly red teeth.

"Ready!" Renard shouted to his men. Victims or monsters, it wasn't worth risking the lives of the students.

"Captain Renard, This is Chief Director Costa Brown. DO not fire on the targets! Repeat, Do not fire on the transformed civilians!" A stern, female voice came over the radio unexpectedly.

Renard stalled, his mind doing whirls. Why?
Why did she not want us to shoot them? Former humans or not they were killing people!

"With all due respect, Chief Director, What are you doing?! These monsters are clearly indiscriminate and have no qualms with taking innocent lives!" Came the exceptionally angry voice of Director Emily Piggot, voicing Renard's concerns.

"Director Piggot, we have no idea what we are dealing with here and it would be best to not stir the hornet's nest until we have a better understanding of the situation."

Captain Renard couldn't remain silent any longer. "Mam, Civilian lives are at risk. As PRT officers... We can't just ignore that."

"You have your orders, Captain." The Chief Director said, a note of finality in her voice.

Renard moved his attention back to the situation. The PRT officers were nervously looking towards him and the approaching zombies. The zombies had taken note of the heavily armoured PRT troopers and were making their way to them, ignoring the scrambling students for the most part. Most of the students had gotten to Fawkes' perimeter and were being organised into an area to wait for evacuation. Renard could also hear ambulance sirens in the distance.

He hated it, but he had his orders and he kept this in mind as he watched the transformed civilians shamble closer. His heart filled with dread as he saw more spilling from the entrance to the school. There were over two hundred of them now.

Renard ordered his men to stand his ground, he would follow orders but they could go to hell the moment another life was in danger.
He just hoped that his orders would change soon.

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PRT Headquarters
Emily Piggot's office

Emily Piggot, Director of the PRT ENE, was close to erupting in rage.

She had seen what that monster had done to that kid, those things were a menace to anything around them and needed to be put down. If the PRT squads had been outfitted for non-lethal takedowns then it would have been fine. But foam launchers and munitions took some time to equip and outfit and with the implied casualties from Shadow Stalker's message... There wasn't time for that.

In a situation like this, every second counted and now with the "zombies" blocking the way and the orders from Costa Brown meant that the troops couldn't get through the door and more students inside could be brutally murdered at any point. She had no idea what the Chief Director was thinking, they were the PRT and to ignore a risk to human life like that was completely against what the PRT, what any law-enforcement agency stood for. Emily knew something was going on with the Chief Director but she didn't know what.

She shifted her uncomfortably large frame in her seat. It was caused by her, unfortunately, failing kidneys. It was a gift she had received from Ellisburg and another gift she had received from there was her intuition. She just knew that something was wrong with this situation, it felt familiar to Ellisburg before things had gone wrong. This was the symptom of a larger problem and she just couldn't not do anything about it. She needed to act before this threatened the city as a whole. She quickly accessed the comm system in her terminal and typed in Armsmaster's comm code and waited. While she waited, she nervously glanced at Renard's helmet footage, watching as the horde got slowly closer to her officers.

"This is Armsmaster, what is the situation, Director?" A neutral, deep voice spoke as the comm channel was established.

"Armsmaster, I need your authorization to help me countermand orders from Cheif Director Costa Brown that pose a danger to the students at Winslow High School."

There was a moment of silence, "Please elaborate on the situation." He said with urgency in his tone

Emily smiled at Armsmaster's insistence. That meant his mind was in the right place in this situation, on the students' wellbeing. "The Chief Director has ordered a no-fire order on transformed civilians at the school, despite them blocking the way of the PRT squads on site and their apparent blood lust, this includes video evidence of them killing fleeing students. I wish to use Directive 32 to countermand the no-fire order and allow the squads to enter the building and save any students that may be trapped in there."

There was silence on the other end of the line where Emily knew Armsmaster was thinking. Directive 32 was put in place to stop hilariously bad top brass decisions in critical situations. It allows the Highest ranked PRT and Protectorate officials in the field to countermand higher ranked individuals orders if that superior is not out in the field with them. However, the decision always faces scrutiny and investigation afterwards and the highest PRT and Protectorate member in the field must agree to use Directive 32. Frankly, Emily felt that Costa Brown's order is so nonsensical that no one can probably blame her, let alone charge her with insubordination if she told Renard to ignore his orders and fire. Directive 32 was made for this very reason however and despite what she thought about parahumans, Armsmaster was an exception. His desire to gain personal recognition is not the most altruistic of motives, but it wasn't that different to ordinary PRT officers and he had chosen to be a hero after all. All in all, Emily believed that Colin Wallis would choose to do the right thing over orders if they ever conflicted.

It was another second of silence until she got her answer. "I agree to that use of Directive 32, Director. I will be there momentarily to provide support at Winslow. Have we received word of Shadow Stalker's whereabouts?"

Emily grimaced. "No, we don't. She is most likely still in the school."

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Winslow High School
PRT Formation

Renard was getting nervous. The zombies were getting ever closer with their slow, shambling steps but that wasn't what was bothering him. It wasn't even the constant growls, shrieks and hissing coming from the horde either. Past the zombies, he saw something that, at the same time made sense in a "Fuck you" kind of way and didn't in a "That isn't a power" kind of way. At the entrance, numerous figures were gathering and on closer inspection, they all looked like civilians. That is if you ignored the blood red eyes and growling. They seemed to be a mismatch of students, teachers and security officers with gang members making up the majority of that fraction of students. All of them had glowing red eyes and a lethal wound somewhere, ranging from torn throats to complete holes in their chest with one even being burnt to such a degree that the skin was charred black. They stared at the assembled PRT officers, aggression and bloodlust evident in what was left in their features. It seemed that the universe just had to have two different types of zombies.

And what was worse? All of the new undead were armed.
Handguns, sub-machine guns, and shotguns. Every one of these new targets all had some type of gun.

However, Renard felt that, even though this felt like a logical escalation of the day, there was something more to all of this. These transformations, zombies and whatever creatures started this mess didn't feel like the result of powers. Powers were often very specific and to have so much fantastical stuff in one place meant that it wasn't a single parahuman that was responsible for this. It was either a team of parahumans or something else entirely...

It was another few moments of waiting, tension filling the air. The zombies approached ever steadily, they were close enough so that Renard could see the drool and occasionally blood that drooled from their lipless mouths and the details on their tattered clothing. The Undead by the entrance had begun to aim their Renard knew he couldn't wait any longer without putting lives at risk. Insubordination or not, he needed to tell his men to fire.

As he was about to give the order, he was interrupted by a welcome voice.
"Attention, I am invoking Directive 32. All PRT squads are cleared to open fire" came the voice of Director Piggot over the radio.

Renard grinned, he wasn't going to be charged with insubordination for protecting people after all.
"You heard the Director! Open Fire!" Renard yelled.

As one the PRT opened fire, and the horde evaporated. Zombies fell in droves, some torn apart by the sheer force of the bullets that slammed into them, others stumbled around headless, others fell with nothing but a neat hole in their withered skulls. The Undead by the entrance had started to open fire as well but their accuracy was horrible. Renard saw one of the bullets hit a PRT officer in the shoulder, where the bullet deflected off the PRT-issue riot armor. By now the Armed zombies were running out of the entrance but some of the officers had started to focus fire on them. They were falling by the dozen, the ones behind them shooting into the PRT as they leapt over their dead fellows. Renard himself took aim at one of them and fired. The chosen zombie's head jerking back, a hole erupting in the head of the former student, the zombie's drug affected features relaxing as the former Merchant collapsed, blood soaking the dirty clothes he wore.

The battle was going well, the zombies were being ground down like wheat. Renard could see the end in sight, the number of zombies were trickling down, they didn't have the density to make a horde anymore and had spread out. From a horde of hundreds to groups of a dozen. In maybe a minute or so, Renard felt that they should manage to clear out the last of the monsters.

That was of course, where things started going wrong.

"AAAAAGH" came a panicked shout. Renard looked in that direction and saw one of the PRT troops had somehow caught fire. The trooper leapt down to the ground and rolled as she tried to put the fire out. While she was trying to put the fire out, Renard looked around for whatever did it.
There! He thought as he spotted a light brown creature with a fleshy purple back clinging to one of the walls of the school. It saw that Renard had seen it and let out a roar. Renard quickly aimed at the creature and fired. Unfortunately, the shots missed as the creature dropped from the wall and ran to the side. During its run, it gathered a freaking fireball in its hand and threw it at Renard. He ducked low, the fireball flying over his head. Raising his head again, he was confronted close-up by one of the withered zombies. It hissed, red staining it's visible teeth and a tattered blue dress was hanging awkwardly off of it. It lunged, claws reaching out clumsily. Renard ducked underneath the swipe and smacked the zombie on the temple with the but of his gun. He heard something crack and the zombie reeled back, stunned. Renard took the opportunity and aligned the barrel of the gun to the zombie's head and fired. The zombie collapsed, its head sporting a new hole.

Ignoring the corpse for a moment, he scanned the battlefield
and could find no trace of the creature. "Attention, we have new targets in the fight, they are using the transformed civilians as cover and are weaving in and out of the battle. Look out for an organically armored, light brown creature with purple flesh. Beware they also have the ability to throw fire." Renard told his men of his assessment. By now, the previously flailing PRT officer had managed to put out the fire and she was now standing up. She quickly rolled to the side as she noticed another fireball heading toward her. It missed her by inches and splashed against the grass, torching it. Renard's eyes followed the path of the fireball and found that there were more of the creatures, over 15, on the roof of the school. They stared down at the PRT troops, hate evident in their posture and Renard heard them all roar simultaneously. Renard was familiar with such sounds thanks to the number of primal thinking parahumans he had dealt with, it was a roar that promised blood and death.

Then the creatures joined in the battle. It went horribly.
Renard absently noted that his tactical assessment was correct, the creatures did use the zombies as cover but it was way more effective than he had feared. The creatures would dart in and attack the PRT officers dealing with the remaining zombies and would distract others so that they didn't notice zombies aiming or creeping in on them. Despite Renard's best efforts at constantly distributing orders and warnings, he still spotted the errant officer taking a lucky shot from an armed zombie, being mobbed and torn apart by unnoticed shambling ones or being struck by a fireball while being distracted and not getting up. He had even seen Patel, having been distracted by an approaching group of zombies, choking on his own blood as a creature ran past him, cutting his throat with its sharp three-fingered claw as it did so.

They were taking casualties, but they were also dishing it out as well. Many couldn't dodge the hordes of bullets that were sent their way by attentive PRT troops. and crumpled as bullets slipped into unarmoured flesh or high caliber rounds punched through their brown carapace. Others didn't have the upper hand in close combat and the PRT dealt with them with devastating strikes, knives or close range shotgun blasts. Atkinson had even clotheslined one of them as it ran past her, put the barrel of her shotgun in the mouth of the prone creature and fired.

The battle continued like this, the PRT taking casualties despite Renard's best efforts as they killed the enemy.
Then, there was a flash of red light and a deep roar that struck despair into the hearts of the PRT officers. Standing where there was the flash, was a large humanoid creature. It stood taller than most people and had grey skin. It had thick corded muscles, large elephant-like feet and its head looked like the skull with no eyes. It had a lipless mouth with human teeth and Its skin was mottled and stretched tight. It had three fingered hands. It heaved its massive chest with every breath.

A nearby PRT officer aimed at it with his shotgun and fired into his chest. A burst of blood erupted from the creature as the buckshot ripped into the creatures flesh.
It didn't fall, however, and looked in the officer's direction and roared in rage. It moved, faster than one would think, and reached the PRT officer in seconds. It's hand reached out and grabbed the officer's head. It lifted the officer with one hand, the officer struggling as his helmet compressed thanks to the creatures grip, and it threw the officer to the ground. A sickening crack and the sound of crunching plastic and metal sounded out as the officer hit the ground.

The creature leapt into another knot of PRT officers, a downward strike crumpling one of the officer's helmet while she collapsed. A backhand hit another officer, throwing him into a group of zombies. The PRT were not idle, however, any officers that were nearby pumped every round they had into the large creature. After it kicked another officer, creating a large dent in the armour and the officer went flying with the sound of broken bones, its multitude of wounds finally took its toll and the creature stumbled for a second before falling over and not rising again.

Just as the PRT were felt relief at the death of the creature, there were more flashes of red light with each revealing another hulking, grey creature similar to the first. The PRT didn't waste any time and open fire on the new arrivals. These creatures waded into the formations of PRT troops, using their immense strength to kill the troopers with ease while taking all of the punishment that they gave out. They inevitably fell through the sheer volume of gunfire but they wrecked a bloody path through the PRT before they did.

Renard was shocked, everything was going wrong. These new creatures needed to be focused on in order to be eliminated quickly, but that left openings for the smaller creatures and zombies and if a trooper fought off the glancing attacks then one of the brutes could blindside them. And it seemed if one of these things blindsided you, your death was a likely outcome.
Renard continued to attack, surrounded by three of his officers and organising his troops into some kind of cohesive unit. They needed to cover each other if they would have any hope of winning this. Just as he was about to call his other men over the radio, a PRT officer bodily landed on top of one of the officers next to Renard while a large grey fist punched a punched another one in the face, breaking the unfortunate trooper's neck. The large creature then spun around and roundhouse kicked the last standing PRT trooper in the chest, denting the officer's chest.

Renard unloaded his rifle into the creature and it took every bullet with almost no reaction but the blood that splattered out of each bullet hole. It then stood up to its full height and backhanded Renard's rifle. Renard felt immense pain shoot up his arm as the gun was thrown from his grip as his right wrist broke. He focused past the pain but it didn't matter as the creature's fist started glowing and it threw and uppercut at Renard's chest. Pain blossomed in Renard's chest as he felt his ribs break and armour crunch into his chest. He flew and bodily landed on his back. He coughed blood as he saw the creature stand over him and roar at him. The creature raised its foot above Renard's head...

And as it put it down, Renard knew no more.

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Winslow High School
Almost Empty Hallway.

As I shoved a Gun zombie's head into a jagged wreckage of a locker, killing it, I had a horrible thought from listening to the distant gunshots for such a long time.

Maybe the PRT aren't doing so well...

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Inq. Halbread · Dec 3, 2016

Winslow High School
Class 3-B

"Alex! Get up! The PRT is here, we are going to be saved!"
Sarah tried nudging Alex to awareness again, but he was still just sitting there sobbing quietly. She felt sorry for him, he had seen his friends die and he watched on as his entire world falls apart around him. Admittingly, the same had happened to her, the friends she had made were probably lying among the corpses out there and she was probably going to need years of therapy to emotionally deal with today. Alex wasn't even a special case, crying and small, fearful whispers and mutterings resounded in the classroom from other survivors that had taken refuge in here with her. All of them were dealing with the events in their own way, but none of them could be really called functional except for her. Every one of them was scared and she was no different. The only difference was that she had done this before.

Had she been in a school that was invaded by an army of monsters before? No.
She was in Seattle on April 1st, 2003.
She had been there when Leviathan had attacked the city. Her friends had died, her life had been destroyed. She had watched crowds drown in the floods as the people who tried to protect them, died alongside them. She had even caught a glimpse of Leviathan at the time. His large hunched green body, three shining eyes, and his blood-stained claws still invaded her dreams on occasion. She was only nine at the time, but for such an atrocity, she was old enough to remember.
When the monsters had appeared, she hadn't frozen up because she knew that if she did then she would die. So she ran. She ran until she had found somewhere to hide, to wait for the heroes to rescue them. She had sat there, listening to the screams of people as they died while letting anyone that she could inside.

She felt like breaking down, she was tired and had so many conflicting feelings were rocking around inside her. She would stay strong, though, ever since she had heard the gunfire she knew that the end was in sight. That this nightmare was going to end soon.

She sent another sad look towards Alex, he was taking this extremely badly. His green hoodie was specked with blood and his messy brown hair was singed so it was obvious that he had gone through some stuff before he made it here. She just hoped he came out of it okay.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oh, please I don't want to die. Alex thought to himself as he curled up in on himself.

He had been listening to the monsters through the door, their steps and screeches, constantly believing that he was going to die. Who wouldn't? So many people had died already, what made him anything different from them? Obviously, when he had heard the gunfire, his spirits had lifted. For a moment, he had believed that he might have been saved.

But the Voices had dashed that hope.

They had started since this whole thing had and it had only gotten louder over time. At first, he had ignored the unintelligible mutterings but he had eventually managed to make out what they were saying. He had never regretted something so much...
The voices picked at every wound, every insecurity that he had ever had and while he tried to ignore them, it took its toll. When the gunfire had started, the voices had gone silent which made him even more optimistic than he would have normally been.

Then they started describing the PRT officers' deaths, in detail.
At first, he had thought that the voices were lying, but as they continued he noticed that the volume of the gunfire got lower and lower as the voices told each story. It was then that he realised that the voices weren't just in his head, that the voices were real...

It was a lot harder to ignore voices that were real.

Now, he knew that they were going to die. The PRT wasn't going to save them, they would fall as the students did.
How would his mother care for herself without him? Would his abusive dad come back?
Under his hopelessness and fear, Alex felt his mind break.

[Destination]
[Trajectory]
[AgreeEEeeeemEent]

You who is fated to die here. DO you want to live? I can ensure your survival in this place from the others.

YESS! I DON'T WANT TO DIE!!

Then YOU ARE MINE!

Alex felt a warmth fill his body. He opened his eyes and as his body moved without his will, Alex could do nothing but echo a scream that his mouth did not.

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Sarah almost didn't notice Alex standing up, he got up from his previous position with measured and calm movements. She stood up to greet him.
"Hey, are you okay, Alex?" she asked him. He looked at her, his irises were red and glowed slightly. A predatory half-smile formed on his face as he lifted his hand.

Sarah leapt away. She knew something was up with him and she didn't want to find out first hand what.

Then she felt the blood in her leg violently heat-up. The back of her leg exploded.
She collapsed onto a desk, knocking it over and falling to the floor has she felt almost boiling blood dampen her pant leg. The others in the room screamed and she could hear more bursts and the screams died out one by one.

Eventually, there was silence and as she felt herself losing consciousness, she heard Alex speak with a weird echo in his voice.

"Pathetic creatures. So fragile and weak but amusing. It's amazing that the servants haven't killed you all by now."

As not-Alex left the classroom confidently, Sarah's eyes finally closed.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sophia had seen a lot today, but this was a new one.

There was blood everywhere, the unlucky occupants of the rooms seem to have exploded. Many of them had ruptured necks and other's chests had been burst open from the inside it seemed. One guy seemed to even be missing a head. Sometimes she hated being a cape if only because she could recognise wounds like this. This didn't even look like a fight, the bodies were in fearful postures as though they didn't even try to fight in their last moments.

This was the slaughter of prey.
It looked like the typical deaths of people who didn't fight for and thus didn't deserve to live their lives.

Except for one thing...

There looked like there was supposed to be another casualty by the overturned tables based on the blood there...
But there wasn't anyone there.

Sophia shrugged her shoulder, trying to shift the unconscious form of Emma into a more comfortable position as she readied her crossbow, a bloodied arrow notched inside it.
She didn't care what happened to these people but whatever had done this was still walking around and she wasn't going to die like prey.

She had to get Emma and herself out of here, they needed to survive.
Now if only that muttering would let up... she thought as she walked away from the classroom.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brockton Bay
Road nearby to Winslow High School

Armsmaster gritted his teeth in frustration as he pushed his custom motorcycle even faster, he needed to get there in time.
He had listened to the progress of the PRT troopers as soon as he had authorised Directive 32 and it had not gone well. The officers had been doing well against the reanimated and transformed civilians until they had been confronted by the light brown creatures with Blaster type powers. The PRT troopers had done well, taking minimal casualties and it seemed that they were going to succeed until they had fought the grey creatures. Dragon had told him that she had reviewed the helmet cam footage and that each creature was a low-level Brute. They were ultimately a game changer, taking an immense amount of gunfire to be killed and being strong enough to kill or disable the heavily armoured PRT officers in one hit.

Armsmaster was nervous about fighting these creatures. The feeling even penetrated the sense of calm he had while speeding through the streets in his motorcycle. He had no idea what the fireballs could do to his armour or if he was fast enough to dodge them. Another thing that was bothering him was the fact that these creatures had something that most Tinker-tech creations didn't. They had Sapience.
It was true that there had been tinker-tech creations that had thought for themselves, but Armsmaster had seen the footage and typical creations didn't yell in rage or divide up an enemy force and take them down piecemeal. This meant that these things had no hesitation to kill people and could plan to do it well. Armsmaster had already decided to do whatever it took to limit the loss of life, the PRT officers were already in a fight for their lives in a lethal situation so he decided he should respond in kind. This was going to be a life or death situation, this was what heroes were meant to do, they were meant to save people and Armsmaster was going to try to save as many people as he could.

"Be careful, Colin. With the estimated strength of those larger creatures, I'm not sure your armour could take so much force that they can exert in their punches." The pleasant voice of Dragon came over his helmet's come system, a note of worry in it.
"I'll be careful Dragon, I'm not planning to be hit but I can't promise I won't either. The situation is chaotic and I can't plan for everything." Armsmaster replied, not letting his nervousness through to his speech.
"I know, Colin. Just... be careful."
"I will."

He could see the school now. The number of dead students and PRT troops he could see made Armsmaster feel genuine anger. He would be lying if he said that he didn't want to see the creatures receive payback. He nimbly drove around the area that the surviving students had gathered and through the still intact perimeter, the PRT officers there shooting selectively into the melee. As he drove into the melee, Armsmaster saw several scenes of the sheer brutality of the fight. Two of the grey creatures were pulling on an officer in opposite directions and the officer didn't survive the experience. One officer bashed his shield into a leaping brown creature, the creature bouncing off of the heavy blue metal and into the path of another officer who blasted it in the face with her shotgun. Another officer was lifted by the neck one-handed by a grey creature where it roared in his face, he responded by unloading his sidearm several times into the creature's mouth.

As Armsmaster reached the fight, he leapt off of his bike, letting it run over a grey creature and crushing it. He lifted his halberd into the air, aimed at a brown creature he was heading towards, monomolecular blade first. His blade felt a moment of resistance and then pierced the creature's carapace. It erupted from its unprotected back as he landed, his armour's servos taking the brunt of the impact. As he stood up, he brought the feebly struggling creature to his face, the low sound behind his ears (obviously an effect of these creatures) making him angrier than he was before.
"You Are NOT under Arrest." He said as he kicked the creature off of his halberd.
Armsmaster dodged to the side, avoiding a grey fist that was on a collision course with his face. He swiped the blade of his halberd through the arm, severing it with significant resistance. The creature roared in pain, clutching the stub of its arm. Armsmaster then slashed the halberd at the creatures neck, the resistance returned and multiplied at the blade reached the spine. The mecanical servos on his arms were up to the task though and the blade went completely through, decapitaitng the creature as it crumpled to the floor.

Several creatures noticed how easily he had dispatched their comrade and turned towards Armsmaster as he heard the PRT troops rally behind him.

Armsmaster was going to try to save these people...

Even if he had to cut through every creature to do it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Los Angeles
Chief Director Rebecca Costa Brown's office.

The scarcely decorated office was a contradiction. It was powerful without being opulent. It was intimidating without being threatening. It was, in actuality, a pretty boring room but it had been arranged in such a precise way to emphasise the power of the owner of the office.

It was also empty.

Suddenly, a rip in reality in the shape of a doorway opened up and Rebecca Costa-Brown walked out of it, rubbing the bridge of her nose. As the door closed behind her, leaving no trace of its existence, she let out a sigh of frustration. Rebecca found that sometimes David could be almost insufferable, despite his importance to the plan and today had been especially bad.
All she wanted to do was sit for a while and relax.

As she walked past her desk, she noticed a notification for her on her computer. She opened the report, skimming through it quickly.
A Directive 32? She thought to herself. Issued about thirty minutes ago. So, who did something stupid while I was away?

When she found the identity of the person who was overridden, she had only one thought going through her head.
What?

Right there, in simple, official text was the last name she expected to see.

Chief Director Costa Brown.

...
What?

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Okay guys. Thats the last one im uploading tonight. I hope you enjoyed the writing!

Inq. Halbread · Dec 4, 2016

Winslow High School
Outside a Storage room on the 2nd floor.

"Back, Vile Demons! You shall not touch those that I have sheltered!" Joshua Lewis yelled as his trusty double barrelled shotgun fired once again, splintering the brown carapace and tearing into the purple flesh of a nearby Demon. It collapsed in front of him, dead, and Joshua took the opportunity to reload. Joshua pressed the breeching lever, popping the shotgun barrels open and releasing the spent shells that popped out of the shotgun. The shotgun had been custom made for his father and now, when it was his, it was seeing more use today than it had in its entire life.

As Joshua loaded another two shells in, he heard another Demon screech in rage and fury which sent shivers down his bones. That only further proved what he knew to be true.
These creatures were really from Hell.
In his fifty-six years of living, Joshua had seen many things in his life. Some of them were absolutely horrific that he had only managed to live through thanks to his faith. But today was the biggest test of his faith that he had ever had. He had watched young boys and girls being butchered in front of him, along with his co workers. It was enough to make anyone feel despair at the sheer enjoyment of the Demons as they killed and killed their way through the school.
It had just proved to Joshua that they were actual Demons from Hell.

And it was sad to say, but he had expected them for Years.

Joshua had been a Janitor for fourteen years and a pastor like his father before that.
When he was young, his father had told him that the Devil's work was coming as humanity had sinned too much and that essentially everyone was going to be killed by Demons. As the world was turned on its head by powers and the atrocities committed by Parahumans, It wasn't so hard for an impressionable young Joshua to believe him.
But as he got older, and experienced more of life, he stopped believing his father.

He had known Lawrence, and he didn't blame him for becoming part of Marquis gang back in the day, doing it to provide for his family in tough times. Could he say a man was all evil if he did such things to provide for his family?
He couldn't completely condemn Jackson's racism as irrational hate after his family had been raped and killed by a particularly violent gang that had been mostly African-American. It was sad to see him give into hate and fear by joining the E88 willingly. Could he write off a man as evil if his actions had been fueled by pain and loss?
In the end, could Joshua condemn them so utterly if their wrong actions were so internally justified?

The world was a place of grey, where everyone thought they were Justified.
Where Good people did Bad things for questionable reasons.
Joshua was glad that his faith made such matters clear for him.

These creatures weren't Good people however. Joshua had seen evil in his life, but these creatures were on an entirely different level.
It was inconceivable for Joshua to even think that such evil could be created by human hands.
And now, standing in a ruined hallway of the school, protecting students from harm, Joshua Lewis knew that they were Demons.

The last Demon in the hallway threw a fireball at him which Joshua's advanced age did not stop him from dodging. It yelled again, malice burning in its eyes and promised pain and death. It ran directly at Joshua, apparently tired of wasting fireballs on him. As it got closer, claws outsretched, Joshua aimed his shotgun at it. To Joshua's surprise, the demon didn't even try to dodge.
Joshua fired and the buckshot tore through the demon which fell to the floor, dead.

With the last demon dead, Joshua looked around. He took note of the fires that still burnt throughout the corridor, the blood that had only gotten thicker on the floor with the new corpses of the demons he had killed.
Since this began, he had only killed five of them, each was a fight for his life but Joshua didn't mind. As long as the children behind that door, of which he could still hear their sobs through the door, stayed safe then his life and health were small prices to pay.

Joshua gave another prayer for their safety under his breath. It wouldn't do to put the children in more danger with any unnecessary noise.

Joshua's prayer was interrupted as he heard footsteps. Cursing under his breath, he quickly reloaded his shotgun and pointed it in the direction of where he had heard the noise, it was just around the corner of a nearby intersection. It didn't sound like the claws that were on the demons' feet and it was too fast for the shambling dead's slow gait.
Joshua's grip tightened on his shotgun, he didn't know what was coming around that corner, but he couldn't afford to take chances.

It had been a few tense seconds. The footsteps had gotten louder and more numerous, showing that there was a group of them coming. Joshua felt coiled like a spring, thoughts of dying here and leaving the children that took shelter under his care helpless ran through his mind.

Then the first one came past the corner and Joshua tensed up, until he saw what had come round the corridor.
The boy was wearing E88 colours and holding submachine gun. He was shorter than Joshua with short brown hair. His skin was not deathly pale and dry, it was nearly red and sweating. His eyes were not glowing red but were a rather ordinary brown. There was no lethal wound on his body and the only blood that he had on his person was around his pants, clashing with the blue colours of the jeans.

In an instant, Joshua relaxed and as the E88 member spotted him, he smiled and signaled to the others down the corridor. What had followed warmed Joshua's heart.

More gang members followed the first, surprisingly, they weren't from the same gang. ABB stood with E88 who stood with Merchant, each holding some sort of firearm and they weren't pointing it at each other, at all.
And in between them, were children.
There were children of all ages and all ethnicities being protected by these people who would have likely bullied or hurt them the day before.
It warmed Joshua's heart to see such unity in the face of evil. That these people who had been been at each other's throats the other day were working together.

After spotting him, the group made haste to Joshua, probably glad that they had seen another person alive.

The lead E88 member walked right up to Joshua. "Hey, Mister Lewis…" He said awkwardly.
Of course. What are you going to say at the end of the world? Joshua thought to himself.
He remembered the boy now, his name was Carl and he was a respectful kid to the staff at Winslow.

"Hello, Carl. I'm glad to see that you and so many others are safe." Joshua said to him, relief filling his voice as he looked over the students again, noticing that despite being shaken or crying, they were physically fine.
"Yeah, at least…" Carl said solemnly. Joshua had a feeling that Carl had at least a few dead friends from this.
Joshua placed his hand on Carl's shoulder in a comforting manner. "I'm sure they aren't suffering now."
He lifted his hand from Carl's shoulder. "Many students have taken shelter in this storage room and I am protecting them from the Demons' predations. You are welcome to find shelter here." He said to the group of children, vaguely aware of the proper manner of speaking that he used in church all those years ago.

Many of the children nodded emphatically or broke out in fresh tears of what Joshua assumed to be relief. It must have been nerve-wracking moving through the corridors, believing that at any moment death may find you.
Any safety at all seemed like a blessing.

As the students eagerly made their way to the storage room door, Joshua noticed that he gang members stayed behind.

"I assume you want to help protect them?" Joshua asked the assembled teenagers.
He got nods from all of them. "If I can prevent someone else from dying today, I'd like to try." said one ABB member shyly from the back, her eyes looking at the floor.
That got another round of nods, surprising Joshua further.

He didn't know how he felt about children fighting these monsters, but he had to admit that today had shown that the youth were just as at risk as he was, maybe even more.
Armageddon didn't care how old you were, after all.

Joshua gestured to the students to follow him back to the storage room, if they were going to help then they might as well be organised properly.
"Did any of you find anyone else on the way here? Joshua asked them, silently hoping for a positive answer.
The looks that the armed students gave him caused his heart to fall.
"I..Uh.. We didn't find anyone alive," Carl stuttered out. "We didn't even find any monsters. This must be everyone who isn't hiding in this part of the school."

"There is someone else…"
Joshua turned towards where he had heard the voice. He saw one of the students, a girl with a blood spattered white strapped top. Her brown hair was disheveled and Joshua could see flecks of dried blood in it. She looked at Joshua with a neutral look.
"What do you mean, miss..?" Joshua prompted
"Bethany. My name is Bethany" she said in a small voice.
Joshua nodded. "Bethany, What do you mean that there is someone else out there?"
She hesitated for a moment, as though she was reluctant to say.
"One of my classmates, Greg. He saved me." she looked away from Joshua and shifted her feet "He killed two creatures by himself. The last time I saw him, he said that he was going to kill the demons. I don't know what happened to him." She looked up into his eyes, a small hint of desperation and… hope in them. "But I don't think he is dead. He was so sure of himself and i don't know why, but i don't believe he died"

Joshua smiled at her. "Thank you for telling me Bethany. I promise we will look out for him of we see him."
She nodded and walked back inside the room.

Joshua couldn't help but think about what she said of her friend, Greg.
His dad had always said that when Demon's walked the earth, a mighty warrior might appear to fight them off.
His dad had never been definite if the warrior would win or if the warrior would show up or not.

If this boy is hunting the demons, then that might mean that he was attracting all the demons to him. away from us. Joshua thought to himself. Could he be the warrior? Destined to kill where everyone else would die?

Joshua shook his head at that. For this Greg to be some prophesised warrior to fight hell was a, frankly stupid idea. The idea that a young high school student would just save the world was unrealistic and was unfair to the poor child.
But the idea of this warrior gave his younger self something, something that he definitely needed now and was willing to grasp on to with all his strength, especially now
Hope

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Winslow School Gym

Jessica could do nothing but whimper behind the duct tape on her mouth as the psychos grabbed another of her fellow victims to kill over that horrible circle. This time it was an elderly man whose face had gone red with all the muffled shouts of anger he tried yelling at his captors, his protests only making the psychos laugh harder.

The man's anger did nothing to stop him from being dragged across the changed gymnasium to the bright orange void where he was stabbed through the heart with the sacrificial knife and dumped into the void.

When she had woke up this morning, she had never believed that this could have happened. Jessica had known that there were an amazing amount of crazy people in Brockton Bay, it was called cape central for a reason, but she had never thought that anyone was crazy enough to commit human sacrifice. The only people she knew who would do that were the Fallen and those Endbringer worshiping cultists had nothing on these guys.

Firstly, she was sure that whatever the fallen used to sacrifice people didn't eat the bodies.
It was a sobering thought for Jessica to realise that she was a human sacrifice to these people.
The worst she had thought that could go wrong today was making a fool of herself in front of her friends.
Funny how that worked out. A small, sarcastic part of herself snarked. The rest of her was way too scared to reply.

Since that morning, when she was grabbed when going past the gym, her day had been nothing but fear and worry as her chances for survival dwindled as the crowd around her got steadily smaller.
The gym had been almost half full when the cultists had started, there were less than half of the original victims now.

The second thing that theses psychos had over ordinary cults were that... Something was happening.
As the cultists sacrificed more people, the gym had started changing. The floor had started to become uneven while that horrible circle had started to sink into the floor. Now, it didn't even look like a gym. The floor had erupted into pillars, the wood splintering to fit its new shape, while the circle had become a pit, the bottom glowed with an orange void and the edges of the pit had begun to look like a giant maw.

She hated it. The feeling of dread that gripped her chest always felt tighter when she looked towards the direction of the void. She had occasionally seen those creatures crawl out of it, screeching or grunting as the lifted themselves out of the pit. They felt wrong, the void felt wrong and if the tape hadn't stopped her from using her hands or legs, she would have run far away from Brockton Bay.

Occasionally, she could hear whispers when she looked at the "portal", but she was too scared to know what they were saying and Jessica wasn't sure she wanted to know.

Jessica looked away from the portal to see the cultists picking up a young girl. Someone she recognised.
Her name was Tiffany and she was a year younger Jessica with short brown hair in a boyish style. They had become fast friends when they had met in the cafeteria last year, bonding over their love of music. She had been so energetic and full of life back then. Now she was dragged limply to the portal, with almost lifeless eyes. The person Tiffany was had died a while ago, but Jessica still felt as though she was the one stabbed as the Tiffany died one last time.

All of a sudden, something shifted in the air. It felt as though her very spirit was being crushed beneath the weight of the air. That's when she saw it. Unlike everything else that had come through, this creature floated out of the pit. As it came into sight, she could see the regal air it was trying to project, as though it was effortless to defy gravity like it was doing.
It was tall and almost inhumanly slender. Gray bone covered most of its body, looking like some type of slim armour, between the bone plates was red flesh. Jessica could see several glowing lights on the creature's chest bone plate but the most distinctive features it had were the skin flaps that trailed down its floating legs and the crest of bone on the back of it's eyeless head.

As the creature rose, the cultists scrambled to a kneeling position and even though Jessica would have liked to look away, she couldn't and she saw the ghost of a superior smirk on its lipless mouth.

Its intelligent... Jessica realised with undisguised horror.

And then it spoke.

"Karak tol. Tral go dosola. Humak vol ta dok." It spoke, each word grinding down Jessica's spine.
"Yes, Master. The Hell mouth is almost completed. We only require a few more sacrifices.
The creature nodded, apparently pleased "Tood. Hy Vord hul ta jool ka tool."

Jessica didn't pay more attention to the conversation. She needed to get away from here and the appearance of the creature was here best chance. Every nerve in her body said that being anywhere close to the creature would be bad for her.

She shifted her body, it was more difficult without her arms and legs but she started to move away from the creature.
I'm doing it… She thought to herself as she started moving away, the creature and cultists were too absorbed in their conversation to notice her slow crawling.

She had almost made it to the fringes of the group, having crawled over the people in her way, when a the bang of the gym door being burst open.

She quickly looked in that direction and almost cried with what she saw.
She didn't focus on their identity covering black uniforms, she didn't focus on the fact that none of them had the badge of the police or the shield of the Parahuman Response Team. She didn't focus on the fact that they had totally ignored the captives in the room and were completely focused on the creature
She had focused on the fact that she could see that the five figures there weren't cultists and that they had guns.

Jessica felt hope for the first time that day.
I'm not going to die. today, She hoped, I could get out of this
By now, everyone had taken note of the new arrivals. The cultists looked on with surprise, the captives looked on with hope. The creature, however, looked on with a sense of snide superiority from what Jessica could tell.

At some unseen signal, the black suited men fired at once. Bullets tore through some of the cultists, killing or maiming those who hadn't managed to take cover behind the wood pillars in the room.
Two of the figures had opened fire on the creature, their bullets simply bounced off, the sparks of the bullets hitting the bone plates illuminating its sneer.

Eventually the two figure's guns let out a loud click.
There was a moment of silence as the figures looked at the creature, weapons at the ready while the two reloaded. The only reaction the creature gave in response to its attempted murder to stare haughtily at them as it let out a raspy chuckle.

Jessica's heart plummeted at the sight. The creature had just faced off a horde of bullets and it had done nothing. She had no idea what the men might have that could damage the creature. Her hope faded as quickly as it had risen. It was then, that the creature ended the fight.

With a lazy wave of its arm, an wave of red energy flew towards the gunmen. Jessica's eyes widened in horror as she saw their fate. One gunman was ripped apart by the energy as it reached him, his pieces flying everywhere. Another started evaporating as his body glowed with the unnatural energy, his screams were drowned out by the sound of burning flesh. The last three had started convulsing and one fell to his knees as he ripped of his mask. The bald man puked blood and fell over, not moving again. The other two had more horrifying fates.

Jessica watched as it seemed that their flesh bloated and melted simultaneously.
The flesh twisted and changed, bulking them up and ripping apart their uniforms and fusing with their guns. After the flesh settled, what was left were bulky, human-like monsters with the tatters of their black uniforms still clinging to their bodies. As they scanned the room with their now arm-mounted rifles, Jessica felt despair enter her hear
She knew that she wasn't going to survive.
She knew that she was going to die like so many people she saw who died.
She knew that her parents weren't going to see her again

And as the creature's head turned to stare into her, her whole world went black.

…
[Interference]
…
[Abnormality]
[Change]
[Study]
…
[Necessity]
[Interface]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Winslow
2nd floor.

It had seemed weird to me when I had found so many shotgun shells from the same place I had found the shotgun.

After a while, it had stopped being something weird and it became something that I was thankful for.

Since I had managed to get the shotgun, I had been constantly hounded by imps. I have no idea if it was some sort of cosmic joke that so many of them would start attacking me the moment I could kill them en masse or if they were actually being attracted to my area from the sheer noise of the shotgun. It had been a bit nerve wracking to face groups of the demons had been "kicking my ass" earlier, but the shotgun had pretty much solved all my problems for me.

The biggest problem was that the pistols couldn't punch through the carapace and melee normally resulted in me almost being eviscerated thanks to them having claws and I didn't.
The shotgun solved both problems.
It had turned my encounters with Imps from fights for my life to essentially Genocide.
Part of me couldn't believe that I had actually considered these demons hard to kill. Their fireball was easy to dodge and no matter how agile you were, it was extremely hard to dodge a point blank shotgun blast.

All this meant that, while I wasn't bored with killing the demons, I was slightly disappointed in their performance.
I sighed as I communicated my disappointment with a shotgun blast. The imp that had received my message, head on, hadn't died but its chest had started bleeding from the holes in the carapace and the sheer force of the blast had seemed to stun it. Taking advantage of the opening, I grabbed it bodily, the shotgun now hanging next to me courtesy of its strap, and lifted the demon above my head. It started flailing madly and screeching but I managed to keep my grip on the demon regardless. With a grunt of effort, I threw it to the ground, head first.
With a crunch, the imp's skull collapsed in on itself and the demon went still.

I had definitely become a lot stronger than I used to be. Before today, I would have had problems even holding my shotgun properly, let alone lifting man-sized demons above my head. I had heard that people who had powers were constantly aware of them. That from the moment they got powers, they knew.

This, wasn't like that. In fact, I was sure that I wouldn't even have noticed if I hadn't punched an imp in the chest and realised that the cracking sound was not my fist. It was weird. I was stronger, faster, and apparently able to be hurt a lot more than I ever have in my life but I barely noticed at all. Was it because I was occupied with other things at the time? Or was it because this didn't feel like a power. It felt... Natural. Like that this strength was something I had earned instead of being given.
I could tell objectively that it wasn't normal, one does not simply dent steel with their fists, but I actually felt like it was normal, like my body had not changed at all.

Maybe I was overthinking it, but I did find a connection between my sudden abilities.
Killing demons...
After every demon I slew, I was stronger, faster, and felt better after every zombie or imp I killed.
I had initially thought it was confidence allowing me to do better, I hadn't had much experiance with that phenomenon so for all I knew it could have been responsible.
But no matter how many times I've heard "Confidence is key", I don't think confidence can heal bullet wounds...

On the bright side I had a few, badass scars to add to my collection and not crippling blood loss.
That made a grand total of five scars...
...
I really wasn't badass before today, was I?

Despite the hit to my ego, It didn't matter much today. What matters now was that somehow killing demons made me more powerful, more able to kill more demons which might make me more powerful.
If I wasn't actually wasn't the one on the demon hunting crusade, I would have called bullshit and said it was some sort of game mechanic.

As I shot another nearby Imp in the face, dodging its fireball, I had to admit that it was pretty useful bullshit.

I moved my attention away from the dead imp and focused on the two still living ones down the corridor.

They sat almost on all fours, hissing and growling at me. After seeing me kill two of their fellows, it seemed they weren't too enthusiastic to mindlessly charge me.
That was alright. My shotgun would come to them instead.

I started my charge towards them, running at what I used to consider full sprint wasn't even tiring to me anymore. Admittedly, I wouldn't beat any athletic stars, but I was still fast enough that the distance from them was being eaten up rather quickly.

The imps hadn't been sucking their thumbs, they both charged up a fireball. I knew from experience that a charged up fire ball was a lot quicker and more damaging than a regular one, having watched an errant one melt the metal of the unfortunate locker it struck. I wasn't sure I would survive such an attack, so like any hard calculus question, I would put off answering that for as long as possible.

I waited until the last moment, when I could see the balls of the fire leave their hands. Then I jumped to the right. I barely made it, feeling the sheer heat through my tattered jacket as the fire balls barely missed me.

I could see them panic. Their eyes, normally filled with hatred and violence, held surprise and a bit of fear for just a moment. They tried to stand and get their claws ready. But it was too late.
Too late for now, anyway.

I slammed my shoulder into one imp where i used the collision to come to a stop. The imp had gone flying into the bare wall, the momentum it recieved from my charge being more than it could handle.
I spun around, aiming the shotgun at the still standing imp. It had already got itself into a lunging position, ready to try and disembowl me.

However, my trigger finger was faster and the shotgun blast vaporised the demon's face before it could even think to jump at me, I turned back towards the imp who was still recovering from its earlier flight. While I didn't feel particularly hurried, playing around with the imp didn't feel like a great use of time so I resolved to finish it off quickly.
I grabbed the barrel of the shotgun and smashed the stock of the gun against the demon's head, throwing it to the floor, lying on its chest.
I leapt, aiming my feet at the Imp's head as I landed. I landed on the Imp with a crunch as the skull refused to take my weight and collapsed.

To be honest with myself, I was rather disgusted with what I had just done. Now there was blood covering my shoes, colouring the white sneakers red, and the bottom of my pant legs.
Another part of me was horrified at the brutal execution I had just commited of a sentient being, but most of me... Didn't care. At all.

The Demons didn't deserve things like mercy or consideration. It wasn't like the demons were giving those out in abundance, or at all.
Wasn't there a line that went 'Do onto others what you would have done to yourself'? I mentally asked myself.
Well, If the demons were going to act like... Demons, then I was going to act like one back.

I decided to move onwards to the next "inhabited" section of the floor. The school wasn't going to clear itself.

Although, considering the sheer amount of demons I was killing, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some Ominous Gate to Hell that I would have to close before I was finished.

I simply walked through the deserted hallway, reloading the shotgun and ignoring the squelching noise my shoes made.

It was three seconds before I heard a nearby gunshot. It wasn't aimed at me.
I ran in the direction that I heard the shot come from, my feet moving me at a quick but steady pace. I hadn't seen anyone since Bethany after I had started my hunt for the demons, whether that was because of them finding good hiding places or all being dead was a question I didn't really want answered.

I rounded the corner and took in the sight before me.

Outside of a storage room was two gang members, ABB and E88 surprisingly, one old man in a Janitor's jumpsuit and they were taking cover behind an uoturned vending machine from two Gun zombies. I could already see the problem. The old man only seemed to have a double barrelled shotgun and the two boys with him only had semi-automatic pistols.
The gun zombies had Assault rifles.

I scoffed internally as I quietly made my way towards the distracted undead. I knew that Winslow was bad but someone must have really screwed up to let those type of guns get in here.
You can't even conceal those things. I thought to myself.

I wasn't as stealthy as I'd have liked. I ended up standing on broken glass and surprisingly noisy rubble, my lack of coordination in regards to my feet finally catching up to me since the school dance. Fortunately, the zombies were too busy making loud noises with their guns to notice the clatter behind them. I stopped just behind the two zombies, both of them still trying to shoot through the vending machine. With how close I was, I could see the bullets bouncing off the back of the vending machine.

Wow. How cheap are those bullets?
Regardless of the gang members frugalness in life, I still needed to kill them before they opened fire at me. I aimed my shotgun at the one to my left and bulled the trigger.

CLICK

Oh, I forgot to cock the shotgun. Pulled down on the pump, making a satisfying noise.
I looked up to re-aim my shotgun to see the zombie staring at me quizically.

Oh come on! You heard a small click behind you but not the utter cacophony earlier?! I internally raged to myself as I stayed silent on the outside.

It was an awkward moment. I just stood there, cursing my luck and the zombie, with its bottom jaw missing, looked like it was unsure on how to react. Its partner was still oblivious to my presence though, the formerly alive Merchants member still focused on killing the people in front of the storage room.
I decided to break the Ice and fired my shotgun.
The inquisitive zombie fell down with a new hole in its chest and didn't get up again.

The second zombie spun around, furious and surprised at my presence. I spun around as well and smacked the stock of the shotgun against the zombie's jaw, breaking it with a crack. The force of the hit threw the zombie down to the ground. I watched as it fell onto its back and started getting up, I moved my left foot back and tensed the muscles in my leg. As the zombie reached a sitting position, I kicked at its head with all the strength in my leg.
Its skull crumpled and I sighed, I had even more blood on my shoe.

I looked back down to the two zombies at my feet, their eyes had lost their glow and they stayed still.
Satisfied that they were re-dead, I moved over to the living inhabitants in the room.

"Hey. They're dead." I eloquently said to the hiding survivors. The hallway was silent for a second before a face from a boy a year older than me looked over the vending machine.
The face immediately went slackjawed when it saw me.

I looked down at my tattered black jacket, shirt, jeans and comparatively pristene shoes. All of them had been partially stained some shade of red with blood.
In fact, I think I just saw some grey on my shoe.

I don't look that terrible do I?
It didn't take long before the other two had realised that the gawking student's head hadn't been blown off and I saw two more faces rise from behind the impromptu cover. They both received surprised expressions from what they saw, the old man's expression eclipsing the other two.
I kind of felt self-conscious with all three of them just standing there, gawking at me.

I suddenly realised that I was still holding the shotgun the wrong way around. I sheepishly flipped it around and held it like I saw some people did it in the movies.
Against my stomach with a finger on the trigger while pointing it at the floor.
It was a bit uncomfortable and I'd rather hold it one handed by my side but I was worried that I would stupid if I did that.

"So…" I began awkwardly, "How are you?"

My question seemed to go right over the teen's heads but the older man seemed to snap out of his surprise.
"Well, young man," He said a bit unevenly. "We seem to be doing considerably better than earlier." He raised his hand towards me for me to shake. "Thank you…"
I shook his hand. "I'm Greg. Greg Veder."

Some expression that I didn't recognise passed over his face for a second before it morphed into a warm smile.
"Well, thank you Greg for helping us." He said warmly. "I'm Joshua and this is Daniel," he gestured to the older, blond E88 boy "and this is Hubert." He gestured to the other boy, who had escaped my notice. He had long, dark hair but looked to be in his first year of High School, it was just something you could tell after a few years in high school, and he wore ABB colours.
Despite the seriousness of the situation, I had trouble keeping myself from laughing at the poor guy's name.

"There used to be a larger group of people here but they either are inside the storage room, defending the students in there or they went to go look for more survivors." Joshua continued,

That was pretty cool. It was nice to see other living people that hadn't been reanimated. I also noticed that, even through the constant state of surprise, the two gang members weren't cautiously watching each other or keeping their distance from each other.
It's nice to see the that they realise that demons are more important than who owns which stinky sink in the bathroom.

"How… How…?" The boy known as Daniel suddenly asked. "How did you kill those things so quickly?"
" Yeah. How did you do it man?" Asked Hubert with a surprisingly laid back tone.
I, personally didn't understand what they were so surprised about. They were a bit gruesome but they were just zombies after all.

"That isn't very important. What is important is-" Joshua interrupted before he too was interrupted by a flash of red light and a loud bellow behind me.

I spun around and saw something I had never seeen before.
It was a large, grey skinned humanoid with an eyeless skeletal head. It was also significantly bigger than me and was built like it punched things for a living.
It probably did with how large it was.
I couldn't get over on how much this demon towered over me.

It seemed that the three survivors also were quite stunned by its sudden appearance, just standing there with eyes wide.
I admittedly was stunned when an imp did that to me earlier and it had almost killed me with a good lunge in my moment of confusion. However, after the fifteenth time it happened, I wasn't so shocked anymore.
It would also stand to reason that stronger demons, like the grey hulk in front of me, would be able to do the same.

So I did the sensible thing. I raised my shotgun and shot it in the face.
It reeled back from the close range blast and stared at me, blood dripping down its face but otherwise uninjured.

…
This might be tough.

Almost faster than I could react, it threw a punch at my head that I was barely able to dodge. I jumped back, firing my shotgun as I went.
Even if the shotgun doen't hurt much, It does hurt. Might as well chip his health away.

It immediately followed me.roughly shoving the survivors out of its way as though they weren't worth consideration. From what I saw, none of them were badly hurt but Daniel wouldn't be helping by the way he was holding his arm.

I just continued shooting, using my thankfully superior speed to keep just out of reach.
And it was just out of reach.
The demon was surprisngly faster than it should have been for a being that size and managed to keep just on my metaphorical heels.
My shotgun was also doing poorly. Another ear shattering blast from the weapon and another spurt of blood would erupt from the new holes in the demon's body. It wasn't slowing, despite how many wounds it was recieving. It felt pain, based on the grunts that came from it as I continuously wounded it, but it only seemed to get more mad, bellowing louder and its strikes becoming even more violent.
I woud probably need to disable its legs to kill it properly.

I stepped in for a point blank blast to the legs. My shotgun fired, I watched the blood erupt and the grey skin closest to the barrel evaporate. A roar of pain erupted from the demon's throat but the leg still moved. The next thing I saw was the demon's fist colliding with my chest. I felt a sharp pain and heard a crack as I went flying, propelled by the demon's punch.

I landed on my back in agony. I fought threw the pain and sat up, looking to see where the demon had gone.
The grey demon was standing by the upturned vending machine, where it proceeded to grab it and lift it, with one hand.

I heard the demon chuckle, and I knew what was coming. As it threw the machine, I rolled away, barely missing the airborn confectionary machine. As it landed in a crash, I rose to a knee only to see the demon infront of me, already attempting an uppercut with its large fist.

In desperation, I put the shotgun between me and it. Its fist impacted the shotgun and it bent.
The force of the uppercut was enough to lift me into the air again, this time I landed on my feet a little bit away.
I looked at my shotgun, half of it being bent almost to a right angle.
It didn't look safe at all.
Oh well, It wasn't helping that much anyway.

Noticing I was just outside the storeroom, I had no where to go and the Demon knew it as it walked slowly towards me, enjoying itself with every step.

At that moment, I just had an idea.

I charged towards the Demon. It didn't react fast enough as I jumped onto it and shoved the bent part of the shotgun into it's lipless mouth.
I then pulled the trigger.
The shotgun exploded.

I felt the shrapnel cut my hands and arms but I also saw the sheer damage that the Demon underwent. Its mouth was gushing with blood and it seemed to be choking on it.
Its hands ineffectively went to its mouth and it fell to a knee in pain.

I stalked up to the staggard demon. I punched it in the head, staggering it further.
"Greg!" I heard a voice to my left. It was Joshua and he threw something towards me.
His double barreled shotgun.

I grabbed it out of mid-air and flipped it around, hand on the grip.
"Is it loaded!" I shouted.
"Yes!" came my reply.
I grinned. I put the barrels of the shotgun against its neck. A moment later, I pulled the trigger.
The Demon's neck evaporated, decapitating it.
The head immediately fell to the floor while the headless body shuddered and went limp, fallong to the ground a second later.

I wiped the blood of my face.
Eww.

I turned towards Joshua and saw that he had an experssion of… Joy?

I didn't really know how to react so I just passed him the shotgun back. "Thanks for the help." I say to him.

"... No. Thank you, for saving us." He said with surprising calm and sincerity. I had a feeling there was more to his words.'

"It's no problem." I replied.
He looked down at the shotgun in his hand. "I want you to have this," he said, pushing the shotgun back to me. "It will do more Good Work with you."
I took it back. "Thanks" I said.

As I held it again, I realised how ornate it was. It was solid and seemed to be well cared for. There were gold accents and real wood in the grip.
The name "Redemption" was carved into the barrel.

"Will you be alright?" I asked Joshua.
He looked back towards Daniel, who was being helped up by Hubert.
"I think we will be fine. As long as this ends soon." Joshua replied.

"...There is one problem though." I awkwardly stated.
Joshua looked at me, surprised. "What?" he asked.
I raised Redemption sheepishly
"I don't know how to use this…"

Joshua laughed, but at what I wasn't sure.

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After a quick crash course in how the shotgun worked and restocking my shotgun shells, I bid my goodbyes.
Joshua enthusiastically said goodbye and wished me luck, as though he knew everyrhing was going to be alright and even Daniel and Hubert, who had become completely amazed at my killing of the grey demon, wished me luck.

As I walked deeper into the school, I felt my resolve grow.
There were still more demons and they hadn't killed me yet.
I really was going to kill them all.

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Inq. Halbread · Dec 4, 2016

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Darkness was comforting to Jessica. She didn't know what just happened and all she remembered was a huge burst of fear when she had looked at the creature and then she couldn't remember what had happened. As she felt herself return to the waking world, she could barely think because her head was in so much pain. Keeping her eyes closed helped. It was almost peaceful and except for the immovability of her limbs and mouth, she was almost convinced that today hadn't happened. She just wanted to sit there with her eyes closed, ignoring the world.

That would not be wise.

She let out a small grumble. Let me have a moment of peace. My day has been shit enough. She thought to the unfamiliar but still oddly comforting voice that resonated through her head.
It is not recommended to have a "moment of peace" in a potentially lethal situation. You are still restrained and unable to speak in the presence of a possibly extradimensional entity. High levels of agitation are highly likely to be necessary for survival.
Considering how low my chances for living past today are… Jessica thought back before she realised something very important. Wait, how am I talking to myself?
I am not you. I am your Power Computing Interface. I am also noticing an increased presence of sulphur inside your olfactory senses. There is a ninety percent possibility that your personal space is currently being intruded upon.

She sighed to herself. It would be just her luck for her to get some sort of personality disorder in a time like this. It had taken Jessica a moment to realize what the imaginary voice had actually said. Wait, what?
Jessica opened her eyes and tried to scream at the skeletal visage that filled her vision. The creature's face was mere centimeters from her own as it hissed. Her heart beat like a motor engine and she could feel the sweat on her skin as she tried to crawl away.
"Kood. Uk baar jol koe retarr backen"It hissed out as it started rising away from her.
Unknown language detected. Attempting translation.
Jessica knew that being distracted by the voice in her head would probably get her killed. But a small part of her wondered…

"Huar, good." Jessica reeled at the creature's sudden use of English. "It would have been a shame for you to have died before my Master had a look at you."
Jessica flinched from the very words of the demon. Earlier it had been easier to ignore when it had just been some random chants, now every word felt wrong as though she could feel the intent of the creature and it was not benevolent. The creature waved it's hand upwards and Jessica let out a muffled yelp as she felt a force lift her off the floor and make her face the creature.
What she thought was a grin adorned the creature's face.

"I have never seen a Parasite Host before," the creature let out a chuckle, "It is veeery interesting. I will look forward to activating more of your kind." The demon turned to one of the cultists. "Put her away from the sacrifices, It would not do to harm the Master's gift."
"Yes Master." Cultist intoned before he dragged Jessica's weightless body away from the terrified people below her.

Chances of escape has dimmed.
Realising that she was likely now the gift for some Eldritch Abomination and unlikely to escape now, the small side of her that was not terrified beyond belief had a simple thought.
I hope I'm not the only one that has this much of a shit day today…

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2nd-floor hallway.
Winslow High School.

I wasn't sure if Redemption was a proper name for this gun.

Mulcher? That was appropriate but lacked the religious angle. Purifier? That name felt more like a flame thrower than a projectile weapon. Liberator?

Well the demons are being liberated of their limbs and lives…
The shotgun was amazingly powerful. Every shot at a zombie or Imp that was close enough simply made them explode into little and thankfully unidentifiable chunks. The gun had even killed a few of those Grey demons in only a few, up close shots. Unfortunately, this awesome blast of awesome death and dismemberment only happened when I was standing a few steps away from the things that needed such awesome in their lives. It went without saying that at range the gun was about as useless as throwing religious pamphlets against the forces of hell. It really sucked that Redemption was only great when you stood a few steps away from the demon but that was how it worked in every single video game I had so I excused it. It's not like all First Person Shooters would get that consistently wrong… Right?

Considering the mess that standing too close to exploding demons made, I felt that it was probably a good thing that my jacket and shirt had been damaged to literal threads and washing the now- revealing clothing would not be worth it. My Jeans were fine, though. It was going to be so hard getting the blood out….

I had time to think of such matters as I crept up on two Imps, trying to claw their way into a classroom through the door. They were doing pretty well, each swipe of their claws ripped more wood out of the door. They really wanted to get into the classroom. Thankfully I had mastered the art of Dynamic Interruption, whether in social situations or violent ones.
I squeezed the trigger of the shotgun and with a bang, the imp that stood in front of me suddenly had a new hole where it's chest used to be. It's fellow turned to me, what I think looked like surprise on its face. It was quickly replaced with pain when I kicked it in the face with my best imitation of a high kick. It reeled back but that was enough for me. It reeled back due to the sudden application of force to its face and I took the opportunity to reload and fire again. With a blast of noise, the imp collapsed, headless.
I sighed. Close range blasts always made Retribution dirty.

I grimaced as I tried to wipe the blood off the barrel with my hand. After just successfully smearing the blood over the barrel, I realised that it might have been a mistake. Now with a red hand and slightly red shotgun, I turned to leave but after I got a few steps away I had stopped. I turned back to the door and looked carefully at the scratches the imps had made. It wasn't methodical, the scratches were all over the door and when I had seen them earlier, they had seemed almost excited to get into the classroom. All of this raised my curiosity to what could have made the demons so eager to get inside. From what I saw, the demons were extremely brutal but they were normally efficient about it. When they fought me, I could tell that they knew what they were doing and weren't just flailing blindly. In fact, I think the main reason that I haven't been killed yet was that I had a gun and they didn't. It must have taken something interesting in order for them to act like hyperactive puppies.

My curiosity finally got the better of me and I moved over to the door and tried to open the door with the handle. My hand gripped the handle and it refused to turn...
Locked. Of course. I thought to myself. If it was as easy as opening the door then the imps would have been through already. I stood there, trying to remember where I was. I think this was the science lab where Mr Gren taught chemistry. Finding Mr Gren was going to be a nightmare…

Oh. Wait… I thought to myself as I had a brilliant plan. I checked to make sure that my shotgun was loaded. Satisfied, I placed the the barrel of the shotgun against the handle of the door and fired. With a blast, there was now a hole where the handle was in the door. I then entered the room, pushing the door aside with ease.

The lab was a typical science lab. Stools and high tables littered the room with a variety of scientific tools, all of it looked pristine compared to the wartorn school that the room was a part of. I didn't pay attention to any of it because one thing drew my attention in particular. Right next to a body that had looked like it was torn apart, was a floating red orb. It was… kind of ridiculous actually. It looked almost like a powerup from old-school video games with just floating above the ground and its simple red colour with small lightning coming from it which only further attracted attention... If it wasn't for the sheer feeling of wrong and familiarity that I felt while looking at it, I would have thought I was going crazy. I needed to see it closer and so I walked towards it.

Only to duck out of the way of a stool leg as it came into my vision. I should have known that the room would have been inhabited. Zombies and demons weren't far away from corpses. I quickly turned around and raised my shotgun for swift retaliation. Only, I stopped short when I realised that I was looking at a very pretty, very angry and very alive girl. She, however, didn't stop when I did and that was how I ended up on the floor with a sore head.
"Ow." I said as I gripped my injured temple. It didn't hurt as much as I thought it should have but it still hurt quite a bit. There was a beat of silence before I heard a muttered curse and I saw the pretty brunette who struck me come to kneel over me.
"I'm so sorry," she breathed out quickly. "Are you okay?"
She then held up three fingers. "How many fingers am I holding up?"
I gave her a half-hearted glare. "Three." I answered. That might have been a bit short of me but getting a stool banged against your head definitely lowers your mood, no matter who you were.

She smiled at me. "Thank goodness." she said with a sigh of relief, "That probably means that you don't have a concussion."
I sat up in alarm at that knowledge. "Wait, what?" I shouted at the possibility of possible brain damage. I instantly felt stupid because I had been dodging bullets and fireballs for most of today and brain damage from a chair probably wasn't that high a list of likelihoods, either in the "likely to happen" or the "likely to kill me" categories.
Oblivious to my internal criticism, she simply shook her head. "I'm sure it's nothing to worry about."
She looked at me with what I thought was a concerned gaze at my chest. "You don't look like it is the worst of your problems anyway." She said in an almost small voice. I looked down at my blood covered chest, a lot of it had dried and was flaking off while the tatters of my once jacket and shirt had fallen off almost completely, leaving the strap of Redemption the only thing adorning my slightly lanky body. I was self-aware enough to realise that she was probably worried about all the blood.
"Don't worry about the blood. Most of it isn't mine." I answered in what I felt was a calming and placating manner. From the expression that she made, I had probably failed in reassuring her.

The awkward silence afterwards was enough for me to see exactly who I was talking to. She was dressed in a fashionable pair of jeans and a T-shirt. A glance to her feet let me see she was also wearing nice looking sandals that matched the blue of her t-shirt. That and her general attractiveness told me that she was probably one of the more "popular but sensible" girls and completely out of my league. Considering that she was still standing and had survived long enough to lock herself in the lab, told me that she was at least tough. The bloody rag tied around a wound on her left thigh only reinforced that opinion.

I made to get up and she stood back to give me enough space to do so. I wondered about why she didn't offer to help me up for a moment before I remembered about the state of my hands. Nothing would make a person want to touch that much blood. As I stood, I looked to my hands. My near constant use of my hands through school and video games left my hands at a nice, average size. In all respects, my hands were average, normal and unintimidating. Except for the fact that my hand was coloured crimson instead of the colour of my pale skin. My gaze rolled across the blood on my left hand. It hadn't really sunk in earlier but a good number of demons had their blood on my hands. Literally.

How many demons have I killed with this hand alone? I wondered to myself.

I hadn't even hurt anyone before today. Yes, I had imagined myself getting powers and fighting villains and I had imagined myself fighting evil in the universe of Space Opera. I had enjoyed fantasies of fighting evil and protecting the innocent but I was self-aware enough to know that stuff like that was most likely just fantasy for me.

And now… I had killed so many demons, and possibly saved so many people that I could hardly believe that yesterday was not five years ago. I had gone from a simple dude who played video games to ripping apart demons and former humans with my bare hands. The fact that this happened because of the sheer rage that I felt, still felt at the back of my mind, left me slightly worried about what was happening to me.
It almost was if I was a video game character. Not the protagonist but maybe a minor character who saves the traumatised and conflicted protagonist who does morally conflicting things. I never really liked drama for drama's sake. Of course, that wasn't important right now. Right now, I could save people from these likely supernatural monsters and as I saw dried blood flake off my fist as I closed it, I realised that I would kill these demons to protect more people. It was scary to realise that you were willing to rip and tear through your enemies until it was done. I almost didn't notice that my fellow student had said something to me as I had been focused internally.

"Hmm? Sorry I got lost in thought there." I said to the girl. She was taller than me but she looked like she was trying to make herself as small as possible. Apparently, A shining knight, I was not.
"Umm," She said. "My name is Sarah. Who are you?"
I flushed, realising that I hadn't told her who I was. "Oh, yes!" I shouted unintentionally. "I'm Greg. Nice to meet you Sarah." I said significantly softer this time and put my hand forward in greeting. She looked down at my hand in hesitation. I felt my eyes widen in realisation.
Bloody hands. Right. Smooth one Greg.
I put my hand down as I felt another wave of embarrassment. Hoping to avoid another awkward pause, I quickly changed the topic.

"So… What's up with that orb?" I asked Sarah as I motioned to the red orb.
She took a glance at the orb floating there malevolently and her face twisted into something that looked like disgust and fear.
"I don't know what it is." She said hesitantly, as if the orb would react if she spoke about it. "It doesn't look natural but I saw where it came from."

She pointed at a particularly gruesome corpse that lay near where the orb was floating. I was surprised that I was so used to random corpses that I started to ignore the ones that weren't moving. It looked like his face had been ripped to shreds and he had died after something had torn out his throat. It seemed to have been an old man, probably one of the higher grade teachers.
"I was hiding here, trying to be quiet, when he barged into the lab. He was yelling and scratching into his face." She paused and I could see that she was disturbed about whatever she remembered.
"He wasn't normal," She shivered. "His eyes were red and he had glowing... veins on his neck. After he... Died, the orb just floated out of him."

I nodded. With everything today, it wasn't that hard to believe that a weird orb could make people weird and kill themselves. I walked closer to the Orb, dimly noticing that Sarah started following behind me. As I approached it, I noticed that familiar feeling increase. I could feel it. It felt boiling hot and ice cold at the same time. It felt comforting and scary at the same time. It was definitely a demon thing. After all I'd seen today, I wouldn't be surprised if this was some sort of demon light ball. I turned back to Sarah.
"It's a bit weird, Isn't it? Like it wants you to touch it?" I asked my sudden companion as soon as I felt the feeling. It felt like it was calling to me. Like it wanted me to carry it.
Sarah took a brief glance at me before she looked at the orb. "I don't. I feel like it's wrong somehow. Like touching it would mean that I would die." she said in a small voice.

That was... Interesting to say the least. We both had different feelings about the orb. I had a feeling that it was because of my recent dabbling in demon genocide earlier. I was slightly worried about that. Did killing demons affect me in more than just was obvious to me. Yeah, I had been getting stronger, tougher and slightly bigger but the biggest downside I could see from that is that I'd need to buy some new clothes. Not like I didn't need a new jacket anyway... I had never considered that whatever was happening me was messing with my mind as well. Thus the question was...

Was I manipulated into seeing the orb as "friendly" or was the orb actually choosing between us?

Regardless of possibly sentient orbs, I wasn't actually going to do anything with it. Considering accepting that demons existed was vital to survival, I think the law of not eating large energy fields also holds true.

I turned my head away from the large floating orb of possible doom and looked back at Sarah. My eyes landed on her leg wound. It was on the back of her upper thigh and looked pretty large. It had looked pretty bad when I had seen the wound earlier. The amount of red on the impromptu bandage told me that it was probably worse than I thought.
"Your leg doesn't look good." I said to her, only realising afterwards how blunt I probably sounded. Thankfully, Sarah had either not noticed or cared about my tone and answered anyway.
"Yeah... Something happened to someone I was with... and then my leg happened." She hesitated, as though she was remembering something unpleasant. She then looked directly at me as a smile, that even I could tell was forced, formed on her lips.
"Don't worry about it. It used to be a lot worse. I had a real problem with the bleeding... Until I dealt with it."
I nodded. She was here. I can imagine that she wouldn't have survived today without some sort of injury. I was curious about what had happened but she looked fine, if a bit pale, and considering I was somehow surviving bullets, I didn't really have the best impression of a serious wound.

I opened my mouth to reply until my thoughts ground to a halt as I heard a familiar sound. A high-pitched roar that I had become all too familiar. I spun to face the doorway, surprising Sarah with my sudden motion. In the doorway was an imp. Its eyes glinted with red hatred and its right arm was curled back, concentrated fire in its hand. I cursed mentally at my inattentiveness. Sarah had been the first person I had seen in a while and I had gotten lost in the conversation. It also helped that she was a pretty girl of course.
My hand was reaching for my shotgun too slowly. I had seen this attack enough times to know how long it took to fire the super hell ball and I was far too late to interrupt the imp. So I prepared to dodge the ball, still reaching for my shotgun and waiting for the exact moment the ball would be thrown. Sarah, having been more unprepared than I had been, finally noticed the intruder and let loose a fearful scream.

With what I supposed was demonic glee in its eyes, it entered the last motion, Its gaze clearly on its target. Sarah. My internal swearing intensified as I realised that she would die quickly and horribly by the flames if she got hit by the hell-ball and I couldn't trust her to dodge as she was just trembling and screaming. I wasn't used to thinking up plans in the span of a second but I didn't care about its quality at this point.

I jumped at her.
It wasn't a tackle, that would imply expertise. It wasn't a shove, that would imply sense that I didn't have at the moment. No, I had literally hopped into her. Before today, I would pretty much have just crashed into her and if I was lucky we would have fallen into a pile of flailing limbs. Today, She crashed into me. As I collided with her, the force was enough to send her bodily flying away from danger. All the collision did to me was stop me and it barely affected my balance. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to dodge again and the imp had no reason to stop throwing the hell ball. I could only watch as the hell ball quickly made its way to me. It collided with my chest and I was instantly familiar with my flesh charring. The pain was intense as I screamed out. I felt the flesh on my face burn to crisp and my skin almost melt. I felt my bones disintegrating and I lost my sight as my eyes popped. I was still alive though, and I felt myself fall backwards. As I collided with something
Warm and Familiar, I could hear the echo of a horrified scream. I landed on the floor with a thud that my scorched nerves barely felt. And as my flesh bubbled and twitched, I knew that even though I couldn't see, my vision was turning red.

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Sarah screamed as she saw what happened to Greg, lying just a few feet away. She had never seen something so horrible as a person being burned alive. He hadn't seen such a bad person. Yes, he actually scared the shit out of her with his intimidating stature and the blood everywhere. Her feelings had only gotten worse when he had mentioned that most of the blood wasn't his. She didn't see any wounds on his bare chest so she was safe to assume that none of the blood was his. If it wasn't for what happened today then she would have labelled him weird or a psychopath. It depended on how scared she was at the time. Part of her knew she shouldn't judge as her first impression didn't go that well either. Maybe he was just the type of person to survive this type of catastrophe. The same thing happened in Seattle.

But he had saved her. It had hurt when he had crashed into her and the impact with the floor had jarred her bones but he had saved her.
He saved me... she couldn't help repeating in her head as she stared at what could have happened to her. She could have been the one dead on the floor. Merely looking at Greg made her stomach nauseous. His chest was burnt black and crossed with gaping wounds where some were even still burning. His face reminded her of a villain from an Earth-Aleph comic about some rich hero. His entire face had been burnt away, leaving a vague impression of a skull and, with ever mounting horror, burnt flesh where his eyes used to be. First, she had been lucky to survive whatever power the parahuman had used earlier and now someone had sacrificed himself for her. Someone she had only met a few minutes ago. Her heart was filled with guilt, sadness and shame at being the cause of someone's death again. Ever since her Uncle had died protecting her from the flood waters years ago, she swore she wouldn't be the reason anyone else died again. She didn't like that simple luck meant that she'd broke her promise.

And as the monster came into her vision, her conflicted heart fell. She had a feeling that her luck was running out.

She had avoided all the monsters that were running around but she had seen them from afar. Up close, the monsters were even more terrifying. The glowing, red eyes stared at her as though they were staring right into something into her. The sharp teeth in it's lipless mouth moved with the jaw, giving her the idea that they'd tear into her if she got close to them. It's predatory gait as it moved towards her made her feel like small insignificant prey that had no chance of survival.

The huge head looked towards her. The monster's three eyes locked onto her's as a claw made out of water ripped into another cape that had flown too close to it. Another person who wanted to defend this city fell from the sky, dead before he hit the ground. The eyes made her feel like insignificant prey that had no chance of seeing her parents again.

No! She screamed at herself mentally. I survived then and I'll survive now.

Her hand grabbed a nearby lab stool and she got onto one knee. The demonic thing ran to her, doubt filling her as she swung the the stool at the monster. She felt relief as she felt the end of the stool smack the monster across the face, stopping it in its tracks. She swung again, desperate to kill it before it killed her. Dread spread through her as it smacked the stool out of her hands. She backed up, choking down a scream of fear. It stalked forward, her entire vision was taken up by her imminent death as her mind went wild.
I'm going to die here. She realised. These are the last moments of my life...

She could only watch as the monster roared and got ready to leap.

As it leapt towards her, It was stopped by something at the very start of its leap. It took her a few seconds to notice the pasty white skin that covered the hand that was holding the monster's neck as it was lifted off the ground. It took her another moment to see the bare chest of her savior that had had glowing red veins that traveled all over his body. She finally saw the glowing red eyes of Greg, framed by a frown of utter rage.

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Winslow High
Front gate

Colin looked around at the battle and he knew that things weren't going well. All around him, creatures were being shot to death by heavily armed PRT troopers and those same troopers were being massacred wholesale by the creatures. All in all, It was a war zone and Colin didn't engage in hyperbole often.

Soon after Colin had arrived, more PRT APC's had arrived who disgorged their complement of heavily armed troopers. Colin recognized specifically two APCs, they were the only two that had mounted heavy machine guns. The only two in the whole city, the cape capital of America. The higher echelons in the PRT had said that the severe lack of armament for one of the most active districts in PRT jurisdiction was the lack of infrastructural importance of Brockton Bay. Colin, in his role of Armsmaster, also had similar problems with equipment due to various reasons. It was a constant point of contention for himself and Director Piggot with their superiors but unfortunately they couldn't really argue their point. By all the statistics, they were right. Spending more on Brockton Bay would appear to be wasteful when there were more important cities to protect. Feeling distaste at that last thought, he stabbed his halberd blade into a crawling undead's head.

When the reinforcements had arrived, the tide had seemed to be turning. The heavy machine guns fired into the crowd of combatants and the fresh squads had orderly moved into the battle, killing the creatures with efficiency thanks to their heavier armour and guns. That is when the situation degraded.
Without warning, several fireballs had erupted from many of the smaller creatures and were thrown at an APC. Colin had recognised them as the charged version of their ranged attack. Colin knew that the APC could have survived two or maybe three attacks at a time, thanks to the heat-resistant armour that was put in place as anti-Lung countermeasures. Over twenty fireballs struck the APC at once. The tinkertech armour bubbled and melted, the ammo for the turret exploded from the heat as the turret started sagging into the APC itself. Colin couldn't do anything as he pulled the badly burned gunner and driver out of the rapidly melting APC.

The second APC was then surrounded by flashes of red light as three grey creatures erupted from some sort of dimensional rift, according to his helmet's visor. He was then surprised as they started ripping into the armour plating of an APC that was rated against at least seven people with super-strength. They tore into the vehicle like it was tinfoil and by the time Colin had killed the last one, there was nothing but two red smears and a pile of wreckage where the APC used to be. The lack of machine gun fire had let the creatures fight back, killing several officers in the initial charge.

Now the battle was in a bloody stalemate. All throughout the lawn where impromptu PRT firing lines, killing the enemy by the dozens, while Colin moved from group to group, using his tinkertech armour and weapons to take hits and to relieve the pressure from officer groups under siege.
I think I now know what Dragon means when she complains about playing "tank" for a raid in her MMO game. Colin thought to himself. As inappropriate a thought that was, It was true in a sense. A grey creature's punch had even dented his chest-plate and if he was the tank archetype, he wished there was a healer archetype as well.

More and more officers were either being disabled or killed by the creatures and while the casualty ratio was at least twelve to one, there were only a limited amount of officers and the creatures seemed limitless. One group that seemed to be fine was Lieutenant Atkinson's group. Somehow she was instituting risky manoeuvres and tactics into her squad's combat and it surprisingly paid off. That was the only success story however and from a group of one hundred and thirty-three officers, only twenty remained.

Colin's train of thought was interrupted by a charge form a nearby grey creature. Brandishing his halberd, he could tell that he needed to wait for the creature to come to him. Despite the possible psychological issues that could arise from it, Colin wished that Miss Militia was here as well. The sheer number of weapons that she could summon would have been invaluable today. As the creature approached Colin, the powerful legs carrying it faster than any human, he ducked under the creature's attempted clothesline and spun around. With a single slash, the creature's head fell off its shoulders and it went limp, its momentum carrying it a few more feet.

That is when Colin felt an impact on his side as he went flying. Using the momentum to flip in mid-air and land on his feet, he saw that another grey creature had blind sided him. Standing up fully, he was in the perfect position to see the creature snarl at him.

He was also in the perfect position to see a smaller creature crash through a window, flailing its arms madly as it fell to the ground with a crunch. The sound of the crashing window was enough for silence to fall over the battle field, the creatures all stopped in their tracks and looked in the direction of the fallen. One had even ceased attempting to kill a trooper it had grabbed, holding him above the ground by the neck, and simply looked in the direction of the fallen creature. Its arms were flailing madly, its spine apparently having broken in the fall, as it tried to crawl away. Even the background noise had stopped.

Another figure fell out of the second-floor window and it landed on its two feet. It was a blond, pale white teenager who was wearing nothing but jeans, shoes and a shotgun on his back. Colin would have dismissed him as a regular teenager if he hadn't successfully landed from a single story drop. He could also see what seemed to be a red glow coming from some of his artery system along with burning red eyes. The teenager then walked up to the creature, who panicked more on seeing his approach. He then lifted his foot above the creature's head and stomped down, pulping the hard skull of the creature.

The teenager then turned towards the stilled battle and let loose a glare that Colin recognised held only rage. Colin almost called out to the young parahuman to run away, to leave the fight to the PRT and him, the people who volunteered to give their lives to protect the innocent. Even if they could use him...
Colin's first syllable was interrupted by a loud roar coming from the grey creature closest to the parahuman, thumping its chest. Colin, horror mounting, realised what that was...

A challenge

A challenge that the parahuman seemed to accept as he snarled and suicidally charged the gathered creatures and undead.

And every single creature roared and charged him, abandoning their former combatants as though they were garbage.

Colin and the bloodied and beaten troopers only watched in shock and awe at the coming decimation that the parahuman was going to face.

And as the teenage boy jumped into the first grey creature that he encountered, bowling it over, digging his fingers into its neck and ripping its throat out...
They couldn't help but wonder what was going on....

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Madison Clements made her way cautiously through the hallway. Since the commotion outside, she hadn't seen many of those beasts around but she knew even one meeting with them would likely be fatal. Being careful was the best course of action for now. She moved slowly through the ruins and scattered bodies, thinking about her next step, three steps before she takes it. She had no idea if any of her friends were still alive, where they were or if they had joined the legions of the freaking undead. She still couldn't get over that. It felt like Hell had literally come up to swallow the school and the more she saw, the more she believed that. Creatures that looked like demons, agonised whispers at the back of her mind and undead pretty much told her that this was the apocalypse.

As her theory had proved itself, she couldn't help but wonder why it started here. Was it all the collective sins of the gang members and faculty? Was it always going to happen this way? She wasn't a big believer in all this stuff but the moment some old testament stuff happens in front of you... Well, she wasn't not believing. With all the internal bickering about sin, she couldn't help but feel that she had something to do with it. Logically, it was probably a demon summoning in the gym or something but her guilt over Taylor was eating her up inside.
Where was she now? Did she die like so many others? Would anyone have helped her?

As she turned into another corridor, she couldn't shake off the weird familiar feeling she had. Then, like a lightning bolt, she knew what it was.
Taylor...
Madison turned and looked at Taylor's locker. It was still intact, still locked.
Still trapping her in her own hell...

Madison's eyes scanned the area and then she cautiously made her way to Taylor's locker.

I may have made her life hell but I wasn't going to leave her in Hell.

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Aaaand now you are caught up to the present.
Please comment or criticise and I hope you enjoyed the writing.

Inq. Halbread · Jan 5, 2017

Well, It finally came through and I was advised to put in a spoiler...
SO enjoy the latest chapter!

Once again, this takes a lot longer than planned.
I was originally going to have these chapters as one 5k but I got more ideas that made the next section a lot longer.
Plus, I thought you guys would like an update.

Hope you enjoy the writing!
Comments and Criticisms welcome.
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It was a blood bath.

Those were the words I'd use to describe the situation.

Another demon died as my fist impacted its head, collapsing it. My spine creaked as I felt a heavy fist hit my back. I spun around, grabbing the demon's grey arm and pulled. The demon crashed to the ground and I jumped, landing on his neck. I felt the pain from my back fade.
I then used the temporary reprieve to reach down and grab the leg of a nearby Imp and flipped it around me to crush a nearby Gun zombie. My impromptu club failed after the third swing, the demon's leg finally separating from imp's corpse as it went flying.

That was a scene that was repeated often during the fight. I was doing the incredible ever since I had somehow... absorbed that orb. I had grabbed and thrown an Imp through a window. I had leaped out of a window and landed after a two-story drop. I had destroyed the skull of an imp by stepping on it. All of those things I had done without thinking, acting as though it was completely normal for me.

Now I was even facing a horde of demons and zombies with my fists... and winning. Every kill that I made on the horde made me feel better, healing my wounds and filling my limbs with strength. I should have been on the verge of freaking out, even the constant anger that I felt wasn't enough to make me attack a horde like that with just my fists. However, a strange warmth kept me from doing just that. It kept me between in the tranquil state that was between panic and calm.

Or at least that was how I thought you could explain it.

As my fist burst through the chest of another Gun Zombie, a part of me was screaming at me to use the shotgun strapped to my back but I just couldn't. I didn't want to. Pulling my fist out of the dead zombie's chest, I backhanded a shambling zombie, decapitating it. I spun around and grabbed an Imp by the neck, using my spin to launch it at a group of shambling zombies.

But as the field thinned out, the number of living demons decreasing exponentially, I felt myself start to calm down. Now I noticed the PRT officers firing into the thinning horde. I noticed some of the zombies, too injured to fight, trying to crawl away from the fight. I noticed a large man in armor attacking the demons that got too far from the main group. I felt myself slowing down, but I didn't stop.
Another grey demon jumped in front of me, trying to get a clean shot with a flaming uppercut. I leaned back, allowing the fist to miss, and I launched a fist at the demon's chest. With a crack, I felt the demon's ribs collapse from my fist's impact. It fell to it's knees, coughing blood. I finished it off by punching its neck, breaking its spine.

I saw an Imp next to me try to leap for my face. I backhanded it out of the air.
As I was about to kill it, it started jerking as a sufficient quantity of bullets struck it and killed it.

And just like that, the warmth faded and I felt my mind clear. My arms felt like lead, my muscles burnt and I could still feel the lingering pain from the injuries that I no longer had.

I was standing in a field of corpses and blood.

Part of me felt like retching.
Another part felt good.

A hiss interrupted my introspection and by reflex, I whipped out Retribution and, without looking, fired in the direction of the hiss. A quick glance in that direction revealed a rapidly disintegrating shambling zombie. I was slightly impressed that I had just done that.

Then, as though my body suddenly realised that my body had gone through all that, I collapsed onto my back.
My lungs were on fire and I had no idea why. My bones ached and I felt like I was too warm and too cold. My mouth tasted like iron and my jaw felt like it had bit down on something too hard for my teeth.
I felt myself falling asleep. It was though my body had just been overclocked and was now attempting an emergency shutdown from overheating.

I couldn't let that happen.

Despite the pain all over my body, I pushed myself up into a sitting position. My back flaring up in pain as tired muscles voiced their protest. As I crawled up to my feet, ignoring my internal organ's pain, I noticed that a few people in deep blue armor, splattered with blood, crossing the field of bodies towards me. The armor looked like a thicker and heavier version of the Riot cop armor that showed up in video games. One of the three officers was even carrying a riot shield! That was so cool!

As I managed to finally stand up, the officers had come to a stop a small distance away from me.
"Holy shit..." one officer said softly as he saw my current condition. "I thought that you had finally died."
...Not the best thing to say today but I guess that he wasn't wrong. I did feel halfway to being dead.
One of the officers shoved the one who spoke with their shoulder.
"Not the time Smitters!" She admonished the officer. "Save the ribbing for afterward. He just saved you from having the experience of feeling your bones being gnawed on, so show some respect!"
"Yes, mam!"

The woman officer turned towards me, placing her large shotgun's strap over her shoulder.
"He isn't wrong though," she said towards me. I had the impression that she was as tired as my body was telling me."You did something that the entire strike team couldn't do and I saw you take a few punches from those Grey things. I've seen those things rip people apart who were bigger than you."
She gave a visible shrug under her armor.
"I've got to say that its pretty impressive. So, are you a parahuman or what?"

"I... Don't think so..." I answer and despite the full helmet, I couldn't help but feel that the Trooper was giving me a blank stare. I wasn't that interested in capes but I knew enough that most powers normally only did one thing and that thing only. Anything different from that was normally a creative use of that power. I knew that I had super abilities but they were things like faster speed and stronger muscles. Rapid healing and a resistance to pain were also there, further proving that it just wasn't some form of adrenaline. Surprisingly, I hadn't even noticed it at first and that was one of the reasons that I disn't think that it was a power. The question of how someone knew that they were a parahuman was asked on the Parahumans Online forums before and an almost universal answer was that they had just known. They just suddenly had powers and could tell that they had powers.

I might have powers but It was certainly easy to forget about them. They felt too natural to be something supernatural.
They also hurt... a lot.

"Nah LT," the other officer spoke up. "I've seen them paras fighting before. They always fight with some sort of stone in their pants. Pullin' they're punches and keeping themselves out a danger."
The officer then whistled, hoisting his heavy machinegun to rest on his shoulder.
"This boy ain't like no parahuman. He goes all in. No pullin punches or nothin for 'im. I'd reckon that a lot of paras would learn a bit from our boy here."

I didn't really know what to say to that. Between my body wanting to fall over and the shock of a PRT trooper praising me for what appears to be a red-orb fuelled bezerker rage, my vocal cords weren't up to the task of portraying my current thoughts. So I just stayed silent. The other trooper was the same but her gave a small head shake after his companion had finished.

The "LT" nodded briefly and turned her attention back to me.
"Look kid. You've done more than enough," She started before stopping at the expression of confusion on my face. "What I mean is that I want you to take a rest. We can handle it here. We will get moving as soon as Armsmaster and the rest have formed up."
I took a pointed look around the school grounds, spotting about thirty PRT officers and a man in heavy armor. The officers were wandering about the field of corpses and the man in armor was sat under a surprisingly unmolested tree, breathing heavily. There were far more PRT officers unmoving on the ground.
"No," I said, noticing the additional gravel to my voice thanks to my sore throat. "There isn't time for that. I'm still doing to need to kill them myself."

I knew what the officer was going to try to do. She was going to try to convince me to stay or at least keep me busy until Armsmaster was ready. Wherever he was.
So I did the logical thing and pushed my body to move past the trio, reloading Retribution as I went. Apparently I wasn't fast enough because the officer had managed to grab me by the shoulder. A surprised grunt told me that she took more then the expected effort to get me to stop.
"We can do this..." She almost whispered. "We need to do this."
I shrugged my shoulder, dislodging the suddenly limp arm.

"I'm not a soldier. I'm not some hardend gang member. Hell, I never even had a single hour of training in my life. The most I do on most days is do school work and do shit on my computer in my room."
I looked over my shoulder to the LT.
"I have no idea what is going on. All I know is that demons are killing people. Demons need to be killed and when I look at you guys... You don't look all that ready to kill monsters. Maybe another day you would be ready, but today you remind me of the people who died enmass here today. You can't go into this with any fear or doubts about what you are doing."
I looked back towards the school, the place where the last demons could probably be found.
"Or, at least that is what I have been doing so far and I haven't become one of those corpses we are standing in. I need to go now."

I moved surprisingly quickly despite the pain all over my body to the front door of the school as I felt the LT's eyes on my back the whole way. When I reached the door, an Imp fell from a celing tile just infront of me and roared in my face. By the time the first PRT weapon was aimed in the direction, Retribution had answered the roar with a bark and a flash, reducung the Imp to a cooling corpse on the tiled floor.

Unsurprisingly, I was starting to feel better already.

===============================================

It hadn't been three corridors and five Imps in when I had found my first bit of commotion.
I heard the jingling of a locker and muted swearing.

As I stepped into the corridor that it was coming from, I took in the scene around me. The hallway was similar to the rest of the school with the assorted destruction and lonely corpses. There were only two things unique with what I saw.
One of the corpses had a bloody chainsaw sticking out of it.
And Madison Clements trying to open a stuck locker.

I was mildly curious to what was going on and so I moved towards my struggling classmate, looking out for dramatically timed red flashes of light or sneaking demons. It wasn't exactly the time to grab your stuff from your locker. It had taken me no time at all to reach her and after satisfying my demonically sensitive paranoia, I took note of what Madison was actually doing.

One of the first things that I noticed was that she wasn't injured, despite the blood on her clothes. She was actually attempting to open the lock of the the locker that she was in front of. She was also failing if the muttered swear words that I could hear from her were accurate. The locker itself was surprisingly intact except for one small hole in the door, close to the bottom from which some brown liquid was leaking out of it. It was locked by one of those standard combination locks that the school gave out on the first day of the year.

I had no idea what I was going to say to her. Some sort of joke about lockers maybe? Thankfully, I didn't need to decide because she suddenly spun towards me, a small knife in her hand and an intense look on her face.
Was I really that loud?

It was a second before she saw that I wasn't a Demon and then I could see the grip on her knife loosening and her features relaxing when she saw that I wasn't likely to try to eat her intestines. As she started to relax, I started to see something else behind her expression. Even though the most that I knew about her was that she was one of the more popular girls in school and occasionally tormented Taylor, I could tell that there was exhaustion behind her eyes. Although I was slightly surprised, I knew on an intellectual level that she had to have experienced some of the horror that was at Winslow today. It was weird imagining someone who spent so much time looking cute facing demons and zombies in a fight to the death.

I guess you never knew.

"Oh thank goodness," she breathed in relief. "Please I need your help! I was trying to get the door open but some weird worm thing went inside. Now its inthereandIhearcrunchingandscreetchingandjustpleasehelpme!"
It took me a second to decipher what she said but I was left with one burning question.
"What's in that locker?"
Madison's gaze dropped to the floor and she suffled nervously.
"Taylor..."
I immediately knew who she was talking about. Taylor Hebert, a girl that I might have a crush on, was in that locker.

It didn't take a genius to figure out who had put her there...

But that didn't matter right now. Taylor was in the middle of a school filled with demons and a weird worm thing was in the locker with her now. If that wasn't a demonic thing then I would eat my surprisingly durable shoe.

I gave Madison a small glare as I sped to the locker, not caring how effective the high speed facial expression was at conveying my distaste. Distaste that I would have been to nervous or scared to display yesterday. Arriving at the locker, I quickly got hold of the combination lock. I could have tried to open it but I knew that I didn't have time for that.
So I Pulled.
The lock broke off with a bit of effort and I swung the door open.
Only to catch the smelly form of Taylor Hebert.
As I put her down on the floor, I took note of the cuts that covered her tall, thin body. I noticed the dark brown substance that had soed through her clothes and her brown hair, smelling lightly of blood. She was in horrible shape and with little trepidation, I looked into the locker where she had been locked.

It looked like she had been trapped with her own personal hell. The bottom of the locker was filled with soiled sanitary pads, explainin the brown substance. Bugs climbed through the pile, through the filth, all of them glowing with this odd red inner light. What they were doing surprised me. On top of the pile lay what was most certainly a demon worm. It looked vaguely like a centipede with a six-pronged mouth. It's segmented carapace looked almost like it was rock and its joints emmitted a red glow. It was currently fighting with a deformed spider that had red light glowing from its wounds and was slightly bigger than my fist. Dozens of bugs were also on the worm as well, all having different disfigurements and larger than their normal counterparts, biting into the carapace, trying to get into the demon within.

I had no idea what was going on but it was obvious that everything was demonic. I grabbed the Demon worm with my left hand and punched the spider with my right, collapsing its exoskeleton and killing it instantly. I brought the worm closer to my face and it screeched at me, in rage or fear I didn't know. It was interesting to look at but I didn't have time for that. I then grabbed it's body with two hands and with a good rip, it tore into two pieces as I dropped it on the floor. I stomped on its head for good measure, killing it. Not wasting any time, I grabbed a nearby piece of flaming locker and threw it in the bug infested mess, the sanitary pads catching alight.

As I walked away from the now burning locker, I noticed that Madison had dropped to Taylor's side, checking over the unconcious girl. I didn't comment on the tears dripping down her face.
"Get Taylor out of here," I told Madison as she looked up at my approach. "Outside is safe and hopefully the Demons would be too busy following me to follow you."
She nodded at that. As she started picking Taylor up, slightly struggling under the taller girl's size, she asked the question that was becoming all too common today.
"But... What are you going to do?"
I sighed.
"I have this assignment due and I don't want to leave it for homework. I have to kill all the demons by tomorrow or bad things are going to happen. I really don't want to hand in this assignment late."
She gave me a weird look but she started walking away to safety regardless.
Wow, the first time you try a joke today and it falls flat...
Good going, Greg!

I still needed to press on, though.
But there was one thing that I needed to get.

I walked up to that monster that was just laying in the corridor, teeth still embedded in it's latest victim. I took note of its blade's steel sheen and destructive teeth. I looked at the blood splattered yellow covering of its motor and the heavy duty hand grips along with its heavy leather strap.
I gripped the Chainsaw's handle with my right hand and yanked, the unfortunate demon's corpse falling off of it as I did so.

This was going to help a lot.

That was when I heard a cough from behind me.
I turned and noticed that one of the corpses was moving and that he wasn't a corpse.
I moved quickly over to him, kneeling beside him.
"Hey, Are you alright? Can I get you help?"
He waved me off.
"No. AAACK! Don't worry Brother. One of the unbelievers managed to get me. I'll see the Masters soon enough."

I was confused. Masters? Unbelievers?
"What are you talking about?"
"Brother? I can't see properly anymore. Did they disrupt the ritual? Did they disrupt the ritual in the gym!?"
"Hold on. You aren't making sense!"
The man looked at me, I could see that his eyes couldn't see but they still had a frantic energy to them.
"I need to know that they didn't manage to do it Brother. That they didn't succeed in stopping the Masters from being summoned. That our Hell on Earth will be a reality..."

And like that, Everything clicked into place.
I could feel my rage flare up inside me.
"So it was you who was responsible for the demons. For all this pain and death..." I stated, a surprising amount of ice in my voice as I stood up fully
"I don't understand brother," he pleaded. "All of us were there, this is what we wanted. This is what we-"
BANG

I lowered Retribution and hanged both it and my new chainsaw onto my back.
I now knew who did this. I knew who was to blame for killing this school and where they were...
And hopefully, I would find my solution there as well.

============================================
Luurek turned around as he sensed one of the cultists approaching him.

"My Lord, we have a problem..."

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Inq. Halbread · Jan 29, 2017

Well. I have a feeling that I am wasting everyone's time when I send these chapters in review so here it is.
I've put it in a spoiler just to be safe anyway.

Hope you enjoy the writing!
Comments and Criticisms welcome!

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It was quiet.
Too quiet.
...
And that would have been the most Cliched thought that I had today if it wasn't so true...

After all the Demons that I had killed and all the death I had seen, I had been surprised to find out that all... this had a singular cause. That surprise had been replaced by anger as I learned that it wasn't some Diety who decided that a Demon killing spree would be amusing. No, it was done by stupid people for stupid reasons who are probably going to stupid Hell after I got my hands on them. When I had killed that man, I hadn't even cared. Logically, I knew that I should have but I couldn't bring myself to care for someone who had wanted a T-Shirt that said, "I'm the reason that millions of people were killed by demons". If these people really wanted Hell on Earth, then I was just going to show them that nothing beats the original. Thankfully, I was going to find them and the solution to this demon epidemic in the same place. The School Gym.

Unfortunately, the gym was on the other side of the school from where Taylor's locker was so I had quite the walk to get there. As I navigated the deserted hallways, I took the time to think about how my life had changed within the last few hours.
...
Nope. I had no revelations despite the fact that I am now an Action movie character apparently. It didn't particularly bother me actually. I've had so many weird things happening to me and I've skipped so many attempts to think through it all that a sudden "Great Revelation" now would be more annoying than relieving at this point. I did notice that my internal thoughts were becoming more sarcastic as time went on but I couldn't really blame myself for that. Fighting a horde of sadistic demons and winning changes your perspective on things. Despite the lack of revelations, the silence was pretty calming.

And that was precisely why I didn't like it.

Before I had binged on a demonic energy ball, I had fought a random demon every few meters or so. I was lucky that shotguns were so popular amongst the gangs in Winslow because otherwise, I would have run out of ammunition for Retribution long ago. Now I hadn't seen a demon for at least three minutes. I was tempted to believe that the number of demons had been depleted from the battle outside of the school. However, If my life was an Action game or movie now, then it was obvious that all the demons had gathered in one place to ambush me. It was also extremely likely that they would ambush me in the one place that I would need to go to stop all this. That is why I felt more and more tense as I recognized the signs that told me that I was approaching the gym. I had only managed to take on the huge horde of demons earlier when I had been using that weird energy ball and I was understandably nervous about possibly facing a group that large without demon stuff. I pressed on despite my mounting nerves though, no one else was in a position to actually stop whatever was going on in the gym and even if they were, I probably would have probably done it myself anyway.
If the PRT couldn't survive against a horde with all that training and guns, then what hope did they have of closing a plot device like a portal to hell?

In the end, I decided to just enjoy the walk. There was little I could do about demons that may or may not ambush me except kill them if they did ambush me. I was still tense but I tried to take comfort in that being tense meant that I'd probably survive the ambush.

Before I knew it, I was in sight of the door leading to the gym. It was on the far end of the hallway that I was in and it seemed to be guarded by one of the large grey demons.
It stood over its vigil, seemingly engrossed in standing in place with an air of professionalism that the smaller demons lacked. It was almost as though it was a knight or something.
Heh, a Hellknight. I liked that...

Of course the HellKnight's infernal professionalism was a bit overshadowed by the horde of shambling and Gun zombies that had congregated just outside the door, trying to budge the large demon away from the door to get inside. The Grey one remained resolute, however, occasionally shoving the tide of zombies back and backhanding the Gun Zombies that got too testy with it.
There were a few Imps too as I saw the Knight reach into crowd, pull out an Imp by its neck and throw it deeper into the crowd.
I found myself stepping to the side to dodge the expert throw as the Imp flew past and impacted the wall behind me, dazing it as it slipped down and gave a vacant stare to the floor. It seemed that the demons were too busy to notice me with... Whatever they were doing.

I shrugged. Oh well, I might as well get started...
The Imp had started to shake off its daze as I stood next to it. It noticed me and raised its head to stare as I raised Retribution. Its roaring shriek was drowned out by the commotion of the crowd. The following shotgun blast was not.
Silence fell over the whole crowd as they turned their attention towards me and the now headless corpse of the Imp. Nothing happened for a second as we stared at each other, unreadable expressions on their grisly faces and what felt like a frown on mine, shotgun still pointing at the Imp's body.
Then, I slowly moved the shotgun so that it was aimed at the crowd, still in what I presumed to be shock at my sudden appearance.
For a moment, the hallway was still.
That stillness was broken when my shotgun fired.

As the zombies in front of me collapsed in spurts of old blood, The shambling and withered zombies started moving towards me while I noticed that the rest were a lot less sure. While a lot of Gun zombies were trying to force their slow bretheren out of the way to get a clear shot, I could spot a few running away on the other side of the crowd. It didn't matter, I'd find them later.
I fired into the crowd again, felling more of the shamblers and destroying an arm of one of the Gun Zombies. Reloading Retribution, I took a mental note of how much ammunition I had.
I felt a grin form on my face.
I had enough.

It was when I had fired again, killing an Imp and the surrounding zombies next to it, that the HellKnight decided to make its presence known. It charged me, roaring impressively and ignoring the demons in front of it. It carved a path through the crowd, trampling and backhanding the demons that got in its way, killing them almost instantly. As it got past the last of its demonic obstacles, it reared its fist back for a punch that would clearly take my head off. I dodged it at the last second, ducking below the flame-infused swing and then I leaped towards the Knight. It instantly saw what I had done and tried to grab me, trying to take advantage of my proximity to it to get me in a probably lethal embrace. It would make sense for me to keep my distance from it, considering it wanted to fight close up all the time. That was true, I would try to dodge around it at a middle distance with a good gun if I had a good amount of space and a good gun.
I didn't have a good amount of space, I was in a corridor that was full of demons and their corpses, there was no space to reliably play keep away from an angry demon. So I did the complete opposite because I did remember something from by berzerker rage...

Hellknights didn't do well with "uncomfortably close"...
It only helped that I had a good shotgun as well.

I fired my shotgun into its chest, barrels literally touching the demon's skin. The demon roared in pain as the buckshot ripped through its chest, hopefully pulping its insides. I took my chance as it recoiled in pain, Lifting the shotgun to the demon's neck and pulling the trigger. The demon staggered from the force of the blast, head falling to the ground unceremoniously. The body remained standing for a second before it let out one last shudder and collapsed.

With that distraction out of the way, my focus returned to the zombies who were beginning to fill the spaces that the deceased HellKnight had carved through the crowd of undead and demons. I felt a smile grow on my face. There was still work to be done before I could end all this.
But at least it won't be boring...

=======================================

Jessica listened to the noise of gunshots outside the gym with bated breath. It was the first thing that she had heard in hours besides chanting and pained screams.

The Gym had become almost unrecognisable. The Wooden planks that had made up the floor had become even more deformed and somewhat scorched, making the gym look similar to a jagged, hellscape rather than any artificial building. More ominous and rocklike pillars of wood had also erupted from the floor, framing the changed portal.
The portal had been completely changed. What was once a misshapen hole in the ground with a glowing light on the bottom had fossilized into a stone structure that looked part Altar and part Well. The Portal was now surrounded by a ring of stone with a bridge leading to the center of the hole, overlooking the hole in reality below. Around it were five pillars of stone, carved with writing that Jessica could barely understand.
Extradimensional runes have shifted three centimeters to the right over the last ten minutes. 78% probability that the runes are simply more than a means of communication
...

Right. And there is this guy.
The voice in her head had been talking to her non-stop about all the little things about the runes and whatever she had been looking towards at the time. In the beginning, she had a small panic attack whenever she heard her own voice speaking back to her.
After hours of being unable to scream out loud at the voices in her head or even try to flee thanks to her still being tied and gagged by the cultists, desensitisation finally made her completely used to her own voice talking to her, barely reacting anymore.

The Number of Captives has grown extremely small. There is a high probability that the ritual is almost finished.
Her power was completely correct. The number of captives like her had been steadily culled one by one as they were fatally stabbed and thrown into the Portal pit.
Out of a humdred people, only three were left besides her. She felt sorry for them, she had been moved away as some sort of prize for the demon's "Lord" and wouldn't be sacraficed to fuel whatever ritual they were doing. She had no idea what would happen to her but she knew it wouldn't be good and a small part of her felt jealousy to the dead.
Their deaths had been a lot shorter than she knew hers was probably going to be a lot longer...

Silence suddenly spread as the Gunshots ceased. Jessica's heart dropped. Maybe it was too much to hope for a rescue...

The silence was deafening. Some of the monsters, clad in the remains of their black uniforms, looked towards the door. Were they... Worried? They still disturbed her. One moment they had been what looked like a squad of soldiers and the next they were monsters with guns in their arms. The thought of being mutated into these monsters with a wave of the demon's hand made Jessica sweat.

Jessica strained her hearing, trying to listen to whatever sounds could leak through the door into the gym. From her position so far from the door, she couldn't hear anything but she couldn't exactly move closer to the door so she just strained her ears.
What is happening out there?
60% likelihood that possible rescue has been overwhelmed by the creatures.

She ignored her own voice and just listened harder, hoping that the rescuer was in that forty percent.
Because without hope, she would have broken down long ago.

She didn't expect her answer to come in the form of a gunshot. She felt relieved as the gunshots continued. The person outside was still alive. There was still hope for them.
What do you have to say to that, huh?
Her power ignored the mental question but she liked to think that it would have had a puzzled expression if it had a face.
Stupid power...

With that last mental remark, she looked around for the demon, wondering how it was reacting.
It was standing on the bridge, looking down at the portal as a long haired, female cultist in a skirt and t-shirt walked up to it. It was a weird feeling for Jessica to see that someone who kidnapped and murdered dozens of people wouldn't have looked out of place walking around in a shopping center.
"My Lord, He is right outside."
The demon didn't even turn to acknowledge her.
"I know, you idiot. Do you believe me deaf?" The demon didn't wait for the Cultist to answer as it continued. "It does not matter anyway. The Parasite's barrier is weakened enough that two more sacrifices should be enough to finally open the portal fully and even if we don't, the Tunneler is powerful enough to finish what we started. There is no way some pathetic human can stop this."

The cultist didn't look very convinced, though.
"But Master, there isn't enough time to consign two souls to hell through ritual sacrifice. The warrior will be here any moment."
The demon finally turned and looked, its skeletal features showing disgust and pride even with its lack of muscles. It looked like it was going to say something until it stopped and it's head tilted in what Jessica thought looked like... Interest?
"Tell me, Insect. You took the vows of supplication that I guess your cult requires of you?"
The cultist's face showed uncertainty as she answered.
"Yes, Master... May I ask why?"
"No."

With one fluid motion, the demon grabbed the cultist by the throat and threw her into the Portal Pit.
Her bone-chilling scream echoed through the room until it was replaced by the sound of mulching flesh.
"There. We need only one sacrifice now. Continue."
Broken from their shock, the Cultists began chanting again, approaching one of the captives on the ground as the demon turned back around, staring at the portal again. This time it was a boy barely older than her in a ratty hoodie with jeans.

She couldn't help but struggle again. Her power was silent but she had heard enough from the demon to figure out what was going to happen. Whatever was going to happen with the ritual was going to happen soon and she couldn't just sit and do nothing, even if in the end she wouldn't be able to do anything. She needed to try. She tried moving her legs or arms apart but, like the numerous other times she had tried, the duct tape around them remained unmoved.
Based on previous attempts, the restraints cannot be self-removed. It is recommended to save energy to prepare for the armed interruption of the ritual.
She stopped struggling.
What interr-

One last gunshot rang out as the doors burst open. The cultists scrambled to hide from the doors behind the pillars and wooden outcroppings in the room. The pair of former humans ran
A smaller demon stumbled into the gym, headless until it collapsed on the floor after a few steps.
The creature's decapitation was caused by a close range shotgun blast from two barrels simultaneously. The armed interruption has arrived.
Jessica turned to stare at the door and she felt relief. She might even be rescued this time.

What walked into the gym made her tilt her head in confusion. She had expected the PRT, the military or even one of the Heroes that lived in Brockton Bay. Instead, she saw a half-naked teenager holding a double-barrelled shotgun and seemingly covered in blood. He didn't look like any version of a hero that Jessica had ever seen. He wasn't really tall or heavily muscled like Manpower from New Wave was. He wasn't covered in armor like Gallant or Armsmaster. He didn't even cover his face, which peaked out from under messy blond hair that told her that he was actually younger than him. She almost didn't believe that he had been the one to kill the smaller demon that was now bleeding on the Gym floor. The only things that destroyed her first impression was the caked blood on the boy's hands, the smoking shotgun, and the used chain saw strapped to his back.
The Majority of blood is not of the subject. However, the portion is large enough to cause exhaustion and possible catatonia in baseline teenage males. Implied severe wounds are not found on the subject's body from visual inspection. Heavy possibility of non-standard biology.

Her mental observation ceased as the boy opened his shotgun with a loud click and replaced the spent cartridges.
Actions are slightly stilted and inefficient even though the action is completed quickly. The subject has received basic education in the weapon's use but is inexperienced.
The boy then stretched his neck from side to side all the while, the demon remained facing away from him.

"Sorry for being late." The boy said in a light tone as though he wasn't surrounded by a hellish ritual and monsters. "There was quite a line outside waiting to get in and they didn't really appreciate me cutting the line."
Jessica couldn't believe what she heard. He walked into a place where dozens of people had been murdered and then makes jokes... Is he even taking this seriously?

The boy then shifted his grip on the shotgun to hold it in two hands.
"But now, I'm running low on shotgun shells so why don't you monsters just kill yourself and save me the trouble of relocating your internal organs to the external."
Oh...
Jessica didn't know what to say to that.
One of the cultists had an answer as he charged at the boy, rage clear on his face.
"You will die for your insolence towards the Master!" the cultist screamed at the boy, brandishing the bloody sacrificial knife.
Seemingly unperturbed, the boy looked at the charging cultist, raised his shotgun and pulled the trigger. The cultist stopped right in his tracks as the blast hit him full force in the chest, destroying it. The knife that he had been wielding came loose of his slackened grip and was sent flying by the cultist's previous momentum. It spun through the air and finally landed.
It landed close to Jessica.

Not one to pass up an opportunity, she started trying to move closer to the knife with her gut filled with anticipation for finally having the chance to get free but also trepidation at what she had seen the boy do. He had just killed someone like that and a quick glance showed that he was now ignoring the cultist's presence as the dying man's labored breaths slowed down.
Unable to look away, she continued watching the boy as the demon finally turned around to face the teenager who had just killed one of its servants.
"I'm curious on what you thought to do here, human." The demon spoke in low tones. "Surely you recognise the futility of struggling against us. You who had fought through the small fraction of the legions of Doom must have an inkling that this is surely not all of our strength. We are your betters in every way and your resistance is frankly insulting to me. Submit before Hell's might, human, before you are shown the deepest pits of hell for your insolence."

Jessica looked towards the boy as she finally managed to get to the knife and started trying to grab it, unfortunately having her hands behind her back made it significantly harder.
The boy just looked at the demon for a few seconds. Jessica could feel the tension in the room intensify as the boy just remained standing there. The cultists had started fidgeting in their hiding places and the pair of former humans began growling.
In a move that shocked pretty much everyone, the boy simply sighed.
"I guess nothing in that speech was about you saving me the trouble and ending it all yourself?" The boy asked the room. When all he received was shocked silence, he sighed again. "Oh well, I guess that I'll just have to do it myself. At least it won't be anti-climactic based on the length of that speech you gave."

Jessica's eyes widened. The demon was speaking in its own language the whole time. The boy obviously had no idea what the demon was saying.
The demon let out a noise similar to a laugh.
"Here I was expecting a warrior from insignificant mortal order, not some ignorant brute. Just Die already."
The demon waved its hand and a blast of energy rushed towards the boy, engulfing him. Jessica felt her breath stop. Another person that would be given a fate worse than death. She felt her heart sink as the blast went past the boy as he dropped to a knee and she waited for the inevitable.

It didn't come. Instead of dying or getting horribly twisted like the other people before, she saw him simply stand up.
"I don't know what you did, but I'm not complaining." The boy said, showing a bright smile at the demon. It was almost as if he looked healthier.
Subject's constitution seems to have increased. High probability that the Energy that the blast consists of is beneficial rather than detrimental to the subject.
The demon was staring at the boy in rage as Jessica finally found the knife and started trying to free herself.
"KILL THE HUMAN!" The demon screeched, hurting Jessica's ears.
As the sounds of screeches and yelling filled the gym, Jessica filtered it out in favor of focusing on cutting the blade through the duct tape around her arms.

She had powers for goodness sake. It was about time she did something.

=====================================================================

From the way the boss demon had screamed, I knew that whatever it was going to do was going to suck.
I did not expect it to summon an Imp.

It had screamed, red energy collecting in its hands as it raised up slightly higher in the air than it was previously floating while raising its hands up. And right in front of it appeared an Imp in a flash of red energy. It then proceeded to summon a Hellknight behind me.
And I was actually low on ammo.
Great...

The priority was the Hellknight so I turned around and charged the Grey demon after quickly giving the nearby Imp a blast from my shotgun. If it was surprised by my sudden action, it didn't show it as it charged me too. My heart started beating quickly as we both crossed the distance. This was it. The conclusion of this battle was going to either save or damn this school. I had to admit that I was a bit excited, despite how weird that sounded. Earlier, it had just been me wondering around the school while I tried to make things better in some unspecific way by killing demons and hoping for the best. Now I knew what to do, that killing these demons would make things better. Ending whatever the demons and idiots were doing here would actually help, it would definitely save people this time.
This time, my failure could spell the end of everyone who survived today...
I felt alive.

Despite the importance of this fight, I couldn't really afford to waste ammo in the Hellknight. They took at least two shotgun shells to take down and that was if I was lucky and got close enough. I'd rather save the remaining four shells for things that would probably die in one hit.
So, with little choice, I decided to try out my latest weapon.
I removed the chainsaw from my back and pulled its ignition cord, the engine purring to life in my hands. I had no idea how to use this as a weapon effectively but I knew enough to move the sharp end to the vulnerable bit of the demon.

In a second, we were close enough to each other to see the expressions of pure rage on our faces and I opened by swinging the Chainsaw horizontally at the demon's neck. The demon wasn't dumb however and lifted its arm to deflect the chainsaw blade as it came to a stop. It was exactly as I expected. I let the chainsaw blade bounce off the demon's arm as my momentum carried me to the Hellknight's side. I swung the chainsaw again, this time at the demon's stomach.
I squeezed the throttle as I did so.

Still expecting an unwieldy blade, the Hellknight was unprepared when the chainsaw roared and the now spinning blades bit into the demon's midsection. Blood spilled from the wound, thrown from the blades of the chainsaw as the demon yelled in pain. I ripped the still spinning blades from the demon and it fell to its knees, grabbing the wound with its hands as it tried to stop the bleeding. I decided to end it before the demon remembered that it could easily cauterize the wound and continue fighting so I swung the chainsaw again at the demon's neck, cutting into it before I removed it again.
With its neck and stomach and neck cut, the demon collapsed, bleeding out as it died.

The kill wasn't clean, it wasn't efficient. It was messy and I kind of felt bad for the demon as it bled out.
But that feeling wasn't enough to get me to stop...

There was a second of peace before a cultist jumped out from one of the weird wooden spikes that were scattered around the gym. the plainclothed man lunged at me, screaming with rage clear on his face. That expression turned to pain as the cultist landed on my chainsaw, the spinning blade running through the man's chest.
A sudden pain in my shoulder and the loud bang told me that another cultist had shot me. As I tried to remove the dead body from my chainsaw, I grabbed the shotgun from my back and fired it in that direction one-handed. I was immediately rewarded by a feminine yell as the female cultist who had shot me collapsed, dying.

I spotted an Imp in mid-lunge towards me. I ducked below the lunge and lifted the shotgun, firing it into the chest of the Imp in midair and a satisfying crunch as the buckshot cracked through the carapace. I ignored its tumbling corpse as I ran behind cover from the sounds of automatic gunfire. I took a look at the person shooting at me; one of those disfigured humanoids, wearing the remnants of some sort of black outfit and firing the rifle grafted into its arm at the wooden outcropping that I was hiding behind.
With a moment of thought, I decided to circle around the wooden pillars to get closer the monster to introduce it with my chainsaw.

Quickly reloading the shotgun with my two last shells, I readied my chainsaw again and ran around the wooden outcropping, only to run into the monster's ugly brother.
It looked as surprised as I was, probably planning to flank me while I was taking cover, so I took advantage of its momentary distraction by swiping the chainsaw horizontally. It didn't have time to react as the spinning chainsaw teeth bisected it with ease as the demon yelled in pain. I had begun moving before both halves had hit the floor.

It took me only a little time to reach the other side of the outcropping and I had noticed that I was only a few steps away from the monster. I crossed the distance in to the demon-human and swung my roaring chainsaw towards it before it could start shooting again. Surprised, It tried to block my attack with its weapon but it wasn't enough. The spinning teeth met resistance at the creature's weapon but it was only momentary as the chainsaw cut through the flesh and metal to cut into and through the monsters body. I turned to face my true opponent who hadn't moved from its position on the bridge over what I think is the Portal.
The Summoner only stared at me as I ran towards it, chainsaw at the ready.
As I got two steps away, the demon vanished, increasing my ire. All It had left was a glowing trail in the air and a newly summoned, angry imp. I transferred all the momentum I had to the kick I gave it, allowing me to come to a stop and launching the Imp into the portal pit.

Ignoring the Imp's screeching as it fell, My eyes followed the trail, discovering the summoner a few meters away to my right. I didn't waste time and simply jumped to the edge of the portal, only two meters away, and ran to it as I readied a punch. I put everything I had into the swing at the demon's head.
This time, it waited until the very last moment to disappear again.

Dammnit. Stay still and actually fight you demonic troll!
It was so annoying for your opponent to simply dodge your attacks again and again without seemingly any effort.
Come back here, you stupid son of a ...
Cultist.
"DIE HERETIC!" The cultist screamed as the old man leaped towards me, knife ready to plunge into my chest as I turned around.
I was faster than the optimistic senior and responded to his threat of anticipated violence with actual violence as I punched him in the face. The man collapsed onto his back, groaning as he faded into unconsciousness.

I focused back on the summoner, noticing it summoning another HellKnight.
This was going to get tiring very quickly.

=============================================================

Jessica shouted in joy behind her gag as the last of the duct tape around her arms was finally cut through.
Quickly removing the remnants of the tape around her arms and ignoring their stiffness, she quickly went to work removing the duct tape around her mouth. A few seconds later and her face was free of the sticky tape and she greedily gulped the air, simply happy to be using her mouth for the first time in hours.
She just sat there for a minute, eyes closed and enjoying the feeling of not being helpless anymore.

Your life is still in danger...

Yes. She needed to stay on target. Gripping the knife tightly, she went to work on the tape on her thighs this time. With her hands-free, it was a lot easier and she figured that she would done in half a minute. As she started work on it she looked at the battle brewing around the portal. Ever since the demon's blast didn't work on the boy, it had been just summoning other demons and seemingly teleporting away whenever it had the chance.
The summoning of Extradimensional entities indicate that the subject has limited control over space-time or dimensional properties. There is a high likelihood that it is using either space-time folding or phases in and out of this dimension to evade attackers.

With her power giving her more info that she regrettably didn't understand, Jessica focused on the boy. He was a literal tornado of death and blood, his chainsaw carving up every demon that got close to him. She felt sick looking at the amount of gore that the boy was removing from the horde that the 'Master' was summoning. What shocked her was the sheer ease that he dispatched the cultists with. Occasionally a cultist would get brave and attempt to stab or strangle the boy.
And the Boy ended their lives without a thought. To Jessica, it was a heartwrenching decision to even think about killing another human being but for him it was a simple swing of the chainsaw that he carried and it was done. She didn't know whether to be scared of him or thankful.
He also seemed to be getting angrier every time that the Demon teleported away when he got too close.

She had no idea what was going to happen but she had a feeling that anything that held the boy's anger didn't last long.

She suddenly felt the piece of tape that she was cutting come loose in her hands. She quickly removed the tape from her thighs and started working on her ankles.
As she reached about halfway through, she suddenly heard something that made her look up. What she saw was a cultist, slightly limping from a gunshot wound in his side, slowly approaching the abandoned group of captives who had managed to move away from the fight and were too busy trying to hide away from the fight happening in the room to notice. It was hard to hear over the loud noises coming from the battle but Jessica thought that she heard him chanting.
A very familiar chant.
And the captives couldn't do anything.

Jessica redoubled her efforts to cut through the stubborn tape.
She didn't have much time.

====================================================================

I had just about reached the limits of my temper with the summoner as it teleported away from me again.

No matter how much energy or speed I put into my arms and legs, the summoner always teleported away the moment my fist or the chainsaw would have hit it. I had the impression that the demon was enjoying my growing frustration. The laughing noises coming from it only reinforced my suspicions.

Once again my chainsaw swiped through the empty air that the summoner had just occupied. Not one to waste the swing, I followed through on the swing, spinning around and bisecting an Imp that thought it was clever enough to sneak up on me. Coming to a stop, I immediately spotted where the summoner had gone to and started making my way there.
I was pissed but blindly swinging at it wasn't making it any more dead.

It was time to get creative...

The Summoner was trying to get me mad and make a mistake. Either it didn't know about my healing or it believed that I'd eventually make a mistake that would be too lethal to recover from. To make me even more mad, It was teleporting away from me at the last second while constantly summoning Imps and Knights to slow me down and possibly kill me.
I killed the other demons easily enough but I couldn't hit the summoner at all.

I leaped into the personal space of the HellKnight blocking the way, chainsaw first. I barely paid attention as the Spinning teeth dug into the demon's chest and instead stared at the summoner behind it, giving it my best death glare. I jumped off the dying demon and landed right next to the summoner. I attacked it again but this time I deliberately slowed my swing. I watched the chainsaw move as though it was in slow motion, getting closer and closer to the demon's skin.
And just like every other time, it teleported away as soon as the teeth of the chainsaw were about to touch it.

That just told me that my idea would work.

I sprinted after the slippery demon, cutting down another Imp and decapitating a hellKnight as I did. Once again I was right next to the demon, ready to attack but this time things were going to be different. In one exaggerated, slow move, I swung the chainsaw at the summoner with one hand. As the chainsaw came towards it, I could see what features it had, gain a self-satisfied air. I knew what it was waiting for and I gave it to it. It couldn't imagine that I might not be blindly lashing out.
And that was why when it easily deflected the exaggerated swing with its claw and prepared a slash with the other, It failed to see my other hand reaching for the shotgun strapped to my back.

Its claws had almost reached at me just as I managed to aim the shotgun at the Demon's face. I felt a savage smile form on my face as I pulled the trigger. The summoner had impeccable reflexes but even then, it was a being that thought in seconds, not in the fractions of them. And no matter how quick the Demon teleported, it could only do it after it thought about it. Which is why the buckshot from the two shells I fired at its face hit it before it could even realise what was going on. It was so sure that it could afford to dodge whatever I threw at it that it couldn't imagine me attacking it with something that could move faster than any human, it was a pride that melted away as the demon reeled back in pain, the eyeless skeletal head bleeding from the impacts and punctures of the shrapnel form the shotgun shell. Even parts of its head crest were chipped and missing small pieces.

With a screetch, it teleported and I turned to where I knew it would go. If whatever energy the demons had healed me, then surely it would heal demons too?
My grin grew wider as I saw the demon exactly where I expected, on the half-bridge above the portal, grasping its head crest in obvious pain as it knelt on the floor
I needed to take advantage so I ran up to the edge of the portal and leaped onto the bridge.

Turning to face the summoner, I noticed that it seemed to be recovering. I walked up to it, chainsaw roaring in my hands and a smile on my face. I came to a stop and raised the chainsaw above my head, eager to strike the irritating demon down.
Just before I did so, the demon made its move. It tried to cut into me with a rising vertical slash but I had expected something like that and so I easily dodged backward as I brought the roaring chainsaw down.
In desperation, the demon blocked the chainsaw with its arm to try to deflect away from its body. The chainsaw's spinning teeth scraped across the hardened carapace of the summoner, causing sparks, for a second before, it broke though and cut down through the arm.

It was a successful block however and the spinning blades missed the demon's body almost completely. I compensated and thrust the falling chainsaw forwards into its chest. The carapace was much thicker on the chest however and I felt the chainsaw struggling to cut through. I was too determined to give up on this one chance and pushed my weight into it. The chainsaw struggled for as second before it finally broke through the carapace. As I pushed it into the demon, I could hear the chainsaw's engine raise in pitch and I heard the breaking of metal.

As It finally pushed through to the other side of the demon's chest I heard a bang and the chainsaw slowed to a stop. Welp, it looks like the demon was annoying even when it was dying. As I let go of the chainsaw, the demon collapsed forward, breathing heavily. We just stayed like that for a few seconds, me standing over the demon, feeling the after effects of the fight, the demon feeling an especially large after effect with the heavily bleeding wound in its chest.
"You know that this won't change anything human..." The demon spoke after a while.
I was still too angry at the demon to feel anything but slight surprise that it just spoke English.
"So you do speak English," I replied in an even tone. "You know that would have been helpful for your speech earlier?"
It laughed, blood falling out of its mouth.
"Like I would debase myself by speaking your language willingly." It raised its head to look at me with its eyeless face. "You haven't won. The barrier to this world is now weak enough for the other side to simply destroy. Killing me is a momentary victory. This world's doom is now inevitable."
I shrugged.
"Not really. It's a portal right? I'm pretty sure there is something that needs to be broken or turned off for the portal to disappear."
The demon gave another choked snort.
"The source of the portal's power is on the other side of the portal. Face it human, you should just lay down and die. The End of your world will come soon enough."

I had to admit, the demon's screechy speech was getting annoying and its vague threats were also making me angrier, possibly more angry than I should have been getting.
"Just shut up already. There is always a choice to do something and a way to make a difference. I thought you were bleeding out sojust die already!"
"Oh... I'm not going to die without you!"
That moment, it lunged at me with its remaining claw as it floated forwards directly from its kneeling position. I would normally have been surprised by the attack...

But I was too angry to care.

I screamed in rage, letting all the frustration of the last few hours out. I kicked out with my right foot and hit the feet out from under it. As the demon could float in the air, it didn't do much but tip it so that it's back faced the floor.
That was all I needed.

With a single rage filled yell, I punched downward towards the demon's head.
As my fist impacted the demon's skull like face, I felt my fist pushing down with a force that I had no Idea that I was capable of.
Its skull exploded on impact.
Silence filled the gym...

....

Just like that, the demon's body fell to the floor of the bridge, whatever force having held it in the air having disappeared with the demon's life. The demon who had been in charge of its lessers and sacrificed them to try and get me to make a mistake, now was still and just as dead as the ones it had summoned. It was almost poetic in a way.

I should have felt shock and surprise at the power my fist had held but instead all I felt as I stared down at the headless summoner was a feeling of... calm?
I was so tired of me having unexpected feelings to things that normal people would probably be scared of. Maybe a therapist would help explain?
Looking around at the twisted and now pretty much empty gym, I took in the enormity of the sheer amount of cultists and demons that I had killed in the last half an hour. That alone was probably an argument for psychopathic tendancies...

That was a discussion for later, however, as there was still the massive portal in the middle of the gym to close.
It was only a few seconds later that I realised that I have no Idea how to do that. If I was honest with myself, I was hoping that the demon was bluffing and that killing it would mean that the portal closed like the final boss from a video game.
Life wasn't like a video game, however, and the source of the portal would probably be on the other side, in presumably Hell.

I stood right there, looking down at the portal as I thought. If the source of the portal is really on the other side then I would need to actually open it so that I could pass through, if only for a little bit, in order to destroy the thing making the portal. That was the real problem. Finding a way to actually open the portal that didn't require some stupid ritual. Knowing my luck, it was probably something to do with virgin sacrifice.

There was another significant question as well. I was effectively weaponless as I had no shotgun shells left and my chainsaw had broken as I impaled the summoner demon. I wasn't going to say that I couldn't actually destroy the source with my fists, considering the day that I had, but I had the feeling that It would take a while if I did so and no doubt every nearby demon was going to rush that portal. While I was awesome today, there was no way I could stop a horde of demons from rushing through the portal if they wanted to. That meant that I needed something to destroy whatever powered the portal quickly so that no demons could make the journey to my world.

Wait, didn't I fight some demon-man things earlier? I asked myself.

Those two bloated human things earlier hadn't looked like demons now that I thought about it and they looked like they were wearing something similar to a PRT uniform. Maybe they had something that could help? So I went to look at the corpses that I had killed earler.

The corpse closest to the portal was a waste of time. It didn't carry anything besides the gun grafted to its arm and I had cut through that with my chainsaw, making it useless. Disappointed at the lack of findings, I wasn't prepared for what I found at the second corpse...
It was a loaded RPG.
I had no idea if the PRT was even allowed to have those or why the former officer had decided to take it with him but I was immensly gratefull to the poor dead guy as I now had a chance to end the fight in one move if the thing was less durable than a tank...
I hoped it wasn't...

Just as I was about to claim the weapon, I heard a man scream out in anger.
Leaving the RPG where it was, I ran to where I heard the noise, eager to find out who did it.

================================================

The scene that was progressing infront of me would have been comical if I hadn't been through this morning.

There was a cultist, wearing slacks and a plaid shirt with murder in his eyes as he brandished a knife at his opponent.
And there was a pretty girl who looked slightly older than I was with dark brown, shoulder-length hair and wearing nothing but a black skirt, a purple shirt and a combo of leggings and boots to fight fend off the knife attacks, unarmed.

And the girl was winning.

The cultist had reach and size over her but she managed to dodge every slash and every stab that the cultist threw, often while moving the least amount possible to do so. It looked flashy and arrogant, further enraging the man to slash harder and faster. Nothing came of it as she still dodged every single slash.
By the time I had arrived, he was already red in the face and taking longer to recover with his swings.

That was when she started punching.
It wasn't a lot of punching like one would expect. No the punches she threw were slow, methodical and few but extremely effective. Everytime her fist impacted with a part of the cultist, I heard the crack of bones breaking with each crack being accompanied by a scream of pain.
After three punches, a few broken ribs and a leg, the cultist collapsed onto his back as he wimpered in pain. The knife lay on the floor, forgotten by limp fingers.

The girl stood tall over her defeated opponent, looking like the grown man's defeat was entirely effortless and remaining dignified even as I could see the sweat dripping down her face.

Or at least untill a few seconds later when she deflated, bending down and leaning on her thighs. Her breaths became heavy as she stood there, seemingly on the verge of hyperventilation as her face turned red.
"Oh god... That was... So terrifying... And... Fucking hard... Can't breath... Stupid power..." She breathed out between each heavy intake of breath.
I had no idea what I could do to help her so I just stood there, staring at her as she recovered from her apparent exhaustion.
Not that I would have complained anyway...

It took a few seconds but eventually her breathing became more even and lighter as the red left her face. Figuring that now was my chance, I decided to introduce myself.

"Hello!" I said probably a bit too loudly.
"EEP!" The girl screamed as she twirled around, eyes wide ready for something trying to kill her. It took her a couple of seconds to see that I wasn't part of that catagory and as I had the vague impression of what I looked like, I didn't blame her.
"Please, don't scare me like that..."
"Sorry..." I said sheepishly. "I'm Greg. What's your name?"
I held out my hand as I showed her the depth of my social skills until I realised that my hand was still covered in blood, wet blood this time...
It probably was a good metaphor for my social skills...

The girl eyed my hand with an incomprehensible expression as I sheepishly let it rest at my side before standing up straight.
"My name is Jessica," she answered softly. "Its nice to meet you."
Oh shit. I had forgotten that part of my standard greeting. Thankfully I could still salvage this.
"Thanks. Its nice to meet you too."
Nailed it.

=======================================

Well, there goes my last conversational idea...
Communication is key to the successful resolution to the current crisis.
What do I even say!?
There is a high probability that Subject: Greg responds favorably to honesty
What does that even mean!?
===================================================

Well that was my first and last conversational Idea...
The silence between us was a bit too awkward so I decided to ask what I had been thinking about.
"So, How did you do that?" I asked Jessica as I pointed at the still whimpering cultist.
She looked down at the genocidal man and then turned to face me with a nervous face.
"A... A voice in my head told me how."

I nodded, accepting the excuse for what it was. It was hardly like I knew what I was doing or how I was doing it.
"I just needed to do something. He was going to kill those people and finish whatever ritual the demon was doing here." She said as she pointed to some people that I hadn't noticed before.
Two were clearly Winslow students, one boy and one girl, while the last was a grown man. All of them had been effectively tied up and gagged with silver duct tape.

Oh. So they actually were killing people to open the portal...
Shit. That destroyed my hope of opening it that way. On the bright side, I did end up saving people that would have died if I hadn't come along. Three more people who survived today.
"The cultists had gathered us up to... Eventually, I got free to stop..." Jessica said softly, struggling with exactly she was trying to explain.
It took me a second to realise what she said.
"So you..." I almost said what immediately came to my mind.
"Yeah..."
...
"I'm sorry," I said to her.
She looked down at the ground as though the floor was the most interesting thing in the world. I had no idea how many people she probably watched die but I knew that I had no idea how she felt. I had probably seen more death than could have fit in this gym at this point but I had always been the one causing it or I had seen most of it after they were already dead.
She would have had to watch people die in front of her and not be able to do anything about it. I'm also sure that it would have taken more than ten people to make a portal that large...

Suddenly, she looked up at me, a fire in her eyes that surprised me considering how she was acting earlier.
"Thank you. But none of the stuff we went through will mean anything if they win."
My surprise evaporated as she reminded me of what I still needed to do.
"There is a problem with that..."
I decided to answer her unasked question that she gave me with her expression.
"The head demon told me that the actual source of the portal was on the other side of it and that if I actually want to close it then I need to open it first."
"Can't we just leave it alone? Let the PRT look at it and try and close it on this side?" she asked with a thoughtful expression.
"No," I shook my head for emphasis. "It also told me that they were doing something on the other side that was going to open it irreversibly anyway. It's going to happen whether we try or not and the only difference is whether the portal will close again afterward."

She looked away, I took the opportunity.
"I know it sucks, but I need to know if you saw anything that could help me end this."
"Why you?"
"Sorry?"
Jessica looked directly in at my eyes.
"Why specifically you? Why are you fighting this instead of the PRT, the heroes or even the military?"
It was a good question, one that I didn't have an answer to.
"I don't know. I wasn't chosen to try to save everything. I was attacked by Demons, fought them off and then decided to kill more of them to save other people. The situation just kind of escalated to the point where I need to open a portal to hell in order to prevent a full demon invasion."
I shrugged.
"In the end, no one was going to do it so I did. The least interesting heroic motivation but there were demons to kill so real life character development takes a backseat to saving the city."

She gave me a look as though she couldn't believe what I just said. I don't blame her. If I was anyone but me then the last few hours of my life would have been pretty far-fetched too.
It was at that moment that I had realised that Jessica had gone very quiet again.

==============================================

From all earlier evidence, the death of a Subject:Cultist is enough to substitute for a sacrifice in the ritual and will likely open the portal.
What? I can't do that! That's killing someone!
Subject:Greg seems to be perfectly fine with the cessetation of other's existences.
I am not asking him to kill that man!
It is completely likely that he would willingly do it without your input if he had the information.
It isn't ok to do just because someone who is clearly not normal would do it.
Unfortunately for "Ethics", The data supports that this is the most likely option to work in the unspecified timeframe and unknown nature of the portal.
There has to be some other way to do it without sacrificing someone just so that we can finish quickly.
With knowledge, comes options and the amount of available knowledge is abysmal. Thus there are limited options that predict success and the only one that ensures the continuation of this world as a certainty. This Subject is partly responsible for the deaths of your friends and is currently risking your family's existence. Does his squandered existence mean so much to you?

It was a good question for Jessica. A small part of her mind reminded her of the choice that a police office had to make when he came across a murder in progress.
Did you kill the murderer to save the victim? When she was younger, she hadn't understood why the choice was so hard for them. She did now, the power over life and death.
It only took some thought to realise what she would have chosen in that situation and what she was choosing now.
She would save the victim, every time.

She just hoped that she could actually help that victim in time.

=============================================================

As I waited for Jessica to gather her thoughts, I noticed that her face looked like that she was having an argument with someone.
...
Maybe the voices were a lot more literal than I thought they were.

I took notice the moment that Jessica seemed to come out of her internal reflection. She turned to the the stirring cultist and gave the man the man a cold glare.
"I saw the demon throw a cultist into the portal. It said that it counted as a sacrifice."
I immediately saw her point. I could use the cultist to open the portal and hopefully destroy the source. Distasteful was the least intense word I could use to describe that plan but it was better than letting the world become a massive charnel house.

I walked up to the cultist and kneeled down to get a good grip on the semi-concious man.
"Thank you, Jessica" I said simply. We both knew what I was planning.
All she did was hold out her hand.
"Please give me that knife, I'm going to free the others." She said in an even tone that even I could tell was forced.
I passed the combat knife to her and she walked away, the entire exchange silent.

It didn't take long at all to drag the cultist to the overlook bridge thanks to my strength. It took slightly longer to retrieve the RPG but soon enough I was ready to open a portal to Hell.
I arranged the man so that a good shove would push him into the portal and took a passing glance at the dead summoner as I did so. It would have enjoyed the Irony of me finshing what it started. If things went my way, I'd have the last laugh though.

There was no ceremony and nothing to wait for to open the portal so with a readied RPG in my arms, I pushed the cultist off the bridge.
"Go to Hell." I couldn't resist.

The body hit the glowing orange energy and got sucked in with the sound of mulching meat.
Then reality broke.

The oppressive feeling in the air intensified, almost becoming unbearable. I could feel my nerves scream as part of my brain begged me to run away from this portal until I couldn't keep going. The glowing energy then cleared as time and space twisted until I caught my first glimpse of hell.
I saw a rocky plain with floating islands and rocks above it but that wasn't what drew my attention. There were thousands of Imps all over that plain along with multitudes of Hellknights. Intersped between them were demons that I had never seen before and the sky was filled with swarming creatures.
One creature dominated the sky, a massive metal monster with too many limbs and it hurt my brain whenever I looked at it. It seemed preoccupied with chewing something with its evershifting mouth that I felt glad to not see.

The Demon was right. If this portal opened fully then everyone on Earth would die.

I frantically scanned my view from the portal, searching for anything that could have looked like something that powered the portal's existance.
There! I could see something glowing with some sort of blue energy in the distance.
I cursed. I had no idea if it was some sort of blue demon.
I didn't have time, I realised as I noticed some of the nearby demons noticing the existance of the portal.
Hoping for the best, I aimed at the blue glow and fired.

The grenade flew through the portal and into the distance of Hell.
I could do nothing but wait as I saw more demons noticing the portal and charging towards it, eager to enter Earth Bet.
I could do nothing as I watched the tide of demons come closer and closer to the portal...
Just as the demons were about to reach the portal I heard a most welcome sound.

It was a muffled boom.

Almost instantly, the portal turned back into orange energy and started to spark .
Having seen enough action games, I sprinted away from the portal pit. Just as I had gotten a few steps away, the portal erupted in a column of orange energy.
I fell onto the ground from the sheer force of the blast and turned over to face it.
It only lasted three seconds but what it had done had me completely shocked.
The bridge over the portal and the celing above it had been burnt away from the sheer amount of energy that had been released, revealing the melted remains of the floors and celings of higher floors.

My mental processing of what just happened was interrupted as I felt the oppressive air start to dissipate, releasing a load from my mind that I had forgotten that I was actually carrying around. The runes that were on the pillars around the portal lost their glow and stopped moving, becoming simple rock carvings.

I had done it... I had actually done it! The Portal was destroyed, the demons were dead and not everyone had died. I relaxed in the idea of it all being over, my eyes closing to rest and a genuine smile that had no hints of viciousness or triumph. For the first time, The rage that I had internalised through the whole day started bleeding away and I felt actually happy since the beginning of all this.
Ow... I thought as I started feeling aches and pains all over my body. I was aware enough to realise that my anger and rage had been blocking my sense of pain and as it disappeared, I started to feel the growing pains of every replaced nerve, overworked muscle, and every regrown piece of skin.

What also came was exhaustion. Despite the elation that I felt, I couldn't stop myself from almost falling asleep right there on the twisted and now non-demonic gym floor. I barely managed to keep awake, giving out a yawn that echoed through the gym.
It wasn't hard for my tired mind to realise that I was going to fall asleep soon and it made perfect sense for that mind to rather go and sleep at home.
I didn't have the energy to think about what I had done anymore, I could do that after I had gotten some sleep.

I sleepily stood up and walked to the gym entrance, saying a slurred goodbye to Jessica and the now free, former sacrifices as I passed them.
It wasn't hard to navigate the deserted corridors to outside and it wasn't hard to go past the throng of PRT officers, most of them reinforcements, as they were about to storm the school. I was Greg Veder, not some costumed superhero and it was safe to assume that my tired body didn't really register with the battle-ready officers ready to fight monsters.
The only officer that noticed my passing was the Lieutenant with the large shotgun, her helmet following my progress as I walked past the PRT perimeter. I don't know why she didn't draw attention to my journey but I was to tired to try to figure it out as well.

As I walked past the gathering mass of escaped students, accidentally bumping into an older dark-skinned boy who seemed to be looking for something, I tried to remember which route would get me home the fastest.
I sighed. I really just felt like sleeping.

===============================================================

The Lord had gazed upon the progress that his legion had made in trying to conquer the world that he had chosen.
It was unfortunate, to be so close to victory but ultimately fail.

Everything had gone to plan. Winslow high-school was the perfect target as it had no strong ties with any organization, delaying any response the PRT or others could muster.
From there, the ritual would commence, weakening the Parasite's barrier over the world while the Tunneler would consume it's weakend strands and ultimately destroy it, allowing his legions to provide salvation for the inhabitants of the dying world. Of course, there was more than one world protected by the Parasite's barrier and so it had become vitally important to obtain a focus that could direct the Tunneler to Earth Bet specifically.
Professor Haywire's skull was ironically perfect for this purpose and so had glowed blue with energy as it was placed upon the focus array, the Altar like device succesfully directing the giant, nonEuclidean construct to Earth Bet.

Everything had gone to plan, the Ritual had begun as the Multi-armed metal Tunneler gorged itself on the barrier between worlds, allowing a small trickle of his demons to pass through into Earth Bet. Eventually the portal had opened, marking how close he was to the successfull invasion of Earth Bet.
He had expected the summoner he had sent, arms high in victory and ambitious mind full of the possible rewards he would get for his service.

He had not expected a Rocket powered grenade to come flying through the portal. He hadn't expected the explosive to hit the Professor Haywire's skull either.

With one simple explosion, The skull was blown to fragments, destroying the focus of the Tunneler. It lost sight of the Parasite's barrier and as the Portal sealed itself to the dismay of his demon horde, the Barrier attacked.

The Tunneler fell from Hell's sky in an incomprehensible amount of pieces, The barrier's counter attack having ripped the Eldritch being asunder.
It was all they could do to see the barrier heal itself of the damage that the Tunneler had inflicted on it.

While his legions screamed in rage at the loss of the opportunity to slaughter and conquer a new world, the Lord remained stoic as he looked at his power armoured fist.
It was better to know your enemy before a critical move and now he knew such enemies existed.

The Barrier was now scarred and would be easier to slip through and eventually he would tear it open to give Earth Bet its salvation.

This plan was years in the making and it could wait a little more...

===================================================================

It hadn't taken me long to get back home on the local bus route and besides a few stares, It was uneventful as well.

I opened the front door, typicaly unlocked like most of the houses in an E88 neighborhood and saw that my parents were sitting on the couch, watching the TV.
That was a bit strange as they were normally at work around this time of the day but I shrugged it off. Something must have come up.
"Hi Mom! Hi Dad!" I yelled in greeting as I went towards the bathroom, my voice apparently getting lost in whatever they were watching on TV. Curious, I took a look.
Huh, the News? I never knew it was that interesting.

I entered the bathroom, throwing my pants into the washing basket and putting Retribution In the sink. My shower was relaxing as I scrubbed myself down, the blood easily coming off my skin was pleasurable and the water impacted my tired muscles.
Once I had finished my shower, I dried myself off and got dressed in the pajamas that I had retrieved earlier.

Taking Retribution with me, I finally went to bed, the shotgun going on top the computer that I kept in my room.
My last concious thought was that my bed was amazingly comfortable before I fell into a dreamless sleep.

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Inq. Halbread · Feb 25, 2017

"Aisha!" Brian screamed his sister's name again but once again, his voice was lost in the noise of the crowd around him.

She shouldn't be here. She shouldn't be here. Oh God, I hope she isn't here.

Brian Laborn repeated that thought constantly as he made his way through the large crowd outside Winslow High School.

His morning had begun well enough, having slept late that morning in his room at his team's base.
Coming out of his room, bleary-eyed and yawning, he had gone to the Undersiders common room on his way to the kitchen. He had been forced to stop when he saw what was going on by the TV.
Lisa, or Tattletale in costume, was in a fetal position on the floor between the communal couch and theTV, her blond hair in a mess as her hands clamped over her ears and the sounds of muffled crying coming from her. The sight was so Anti-Lisa that Brian was immediately on guard. He wasn't stupid. With a power like hers, she took delight in every public appearance as though it was a game to her. Before he knew it, he was cautiously moving towards her, instincts developed from being a villain had kept him looking around for some sort of enemy.

As he made it to Lisa's side, he knelt next to her and tried to shake her to awareness.
"Tattletale? Tattletale, get up." Brian said in a whisper, careful not to attract any other attention.
"Brian?" Lisa asked weakly, pain filling her voice. "Please... TV... Off....."
He had understood immediately what she wanted and as he turned to turn off the TV. As he was about to hit the power switch, something in his gut made him take a look at what was actually on the TV before he turned it off.
It was a news report of a parahuman attack on a High School.
Winslow High School.

Turning off the TV, he didn't know why but the idea of Winslow being attacked gave him an extremely bad feeling. Turning around, he absently helped Lisa onto the couch, ignoring the tears of relief that soaked the shirt he had worn to bed the previous night. After making sure the catatonic Lisa was comfortable, Brian had moved away while typing the number for Aisha's school in his cellphone.
When they had finally answered, he received the news that he had been dreading. Aisha wasn't there. It was way too much to hope that his mom had actually made sure she had actually gone to school and there was no way that Aisha was going to stay in their mom's house with her newest "boyfriend".

There was one place she could have gone...
She had a friend that had graduated to Winslow Highschool this year...
As he rushed for his safehouse's exit, he had hoped that she wouldn't be there...

It had only taken a short ride on his bike to get to the school, passing at least one news van, but that was enough time for his mind to go wild with what ifs and maybe's. It was all he could do to focus on driving there, there wasn't use in panicking over Aisha's safety until he had actually found evidence that she was there in the first place. It was his luck that he had found Aisha's Bicycle just outside the school grounds proper, hidden behind a bush.

That led him to the present, where he was trying to get past the crowd that had formed just outside the grounds to the student evacuation area.
"Aisha!" Brian yelled again, hoping that his sister was in the crowd and not where the students were evacuated. It didn't work as his yell was completely drowned out by others in the crowd yelling, each with their own name to add to the noise of the crowd.

He took a second to still himself mentally. Panicking wouldn't help now. He needed to find out if Aisha was at the student evacuation site first. The rest could come later.
It only took him a few minutes to extract himself from the crowd, coming out thankfully close to the ambulances that marked the evacuation area.
That was when his heart stopped for a second and then moved faster as he saw something that was better than Brian feared and worse than he hoped. Past the shocked and crying students and the overworked EMTs was Aisha, lying on a gurney while being fussed over by a man in a suit and an EMT.
What made his heart sink was the bandages wrapped down her arm and the clear red that he could see that stained her green t-shirt.

Filled with determination, he took a step towards them only to collide into a shirtless teenager. Politely pushing past him, he dimly noticed the blood that covered the teen's chest and arms along with the exhausted look that he had on his face. It was only instincts that he had developed from being a vilian that allowed him to notice the shotgun that the teen loosely held in his hand as he mumbled an apology and walked past Brian. He stopped himself from calling out to the armed teen. It looked like that he had a rough day but Brian knew that someone way more important to him needed him at the moment.

Ignoring the dazed teen, he turned back to his sister, making his way to the ambulance with urgency clear in his steps. Aisha needed him now.

As he reached a few steps away, Aisha suddenly stopped talking to the man in the suit and she turned her head to face him, surprise clear on her face.
"Hey, Bro," she smiled, pain obvious to Brian in the way that the smile didn't reach her eyes like it normally did. "What are you doing here? I didn't know you went to Winslow anymore. I th-"
"Aisha, No." Brian interrupted, the sheer emotion of relief in his voice surprising him. "Not now. You could have died. Why were you here? Why did you leave school?"
And just as quickly as Aisha's smile had appeared, it disappeared.
"Hey, If I had known some freaky monsters were going to invade then I would have stayed for Mrs Schultz's droning voice. I went to go visit my friend. "

Brian could feel his relief at the safety of his sister begin to twist into irritation.
"You weren't supposed to be out of class, Aisha. Wandering around the city is dangerous, especially so close to the Docks. Why did you think that skipping school was a good idea in the first place? What were you thinking?" He turned to ask the EMT how bad the injuries were, only to notice that the young man had subtly moved away to work on someone else, giving the siblings their space.

Brian fully expected her to look at him with indignation, to deny that he had any say over what she did because he didn't live with mom and that she knew she what she was doing. In a way, it would have been comforting for him if she had acted like the Aisha he knew, loved and sometimes got irritated with.
Which is why he could feel his heart break when his normally energetic and disruptive sister simply deflated.
"I know," she said in a tone that Brian never wanted to hear from his sister. It was a tone that he had only heard some people who had seen truly horrific things use. "I messed up Brian. I was there and saw what happened when it started. I saw so many kids older than me die or get twisted into monsters, things that kept me up after watching zombie movies but worse." She looked into his eyes, tears forming in the corners.
"I even saw some of them get back up but it wasn't them anymore, just monsters who looked like them. I was seen once, but I managed to hide. I was just lucky i was found by some of the gang member kids because if they hadn't..."
It was then when she broke into sobbing.

She didn't say anymore but Brian knew enough. He wasn't there for her. He couldn't have been but that didn't stop the part of him that wished that he was there, blame him for it. He moved closer, putting his hand on her shoulder and massaged it gently. She tensed for a second before leaning into it, her sobbing growing quieter. It was something he had learned from his dad and he always did it to comfort Aisha when she needed it.

A cough broke Brian's concentration and he saw the suited man trying to get his attention.
"Mr... Barnes?" Brian dimly remembered the man across from Aisha.
The man smiled.
"I'm glad you remember, We didn't see each other often when I was working on your dad's case."
"Why are you here?" Brian asked. It might have been a bit terse but Brian didn't care, Aisha needed him more than he needed to be polite.
His face grew a bit grave as he answered.
"My daughter comes to Winslow. After making sure that she was okay, I stumbled upon Aisha and decided to help her by calling her Mother."
" What happened when you did." Brian knew what probably happened, but he asked all the same. Maybe their mom will actually care this time?
"... I think we should reopen the custody case..."

Brian couldn't say he was shocked as Mr Barnes described exactly what happened when he interrupted his mom's "me time"
So engrossed in the discussion, they didn't notice that, for just a second, Aisha was no longer on the gurney.

For a second, nothing was there but a familiarly shaped shadow.
Sobbing.

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John Briglow despaired as he read the casualty figures from Winslow High School.

How the hell am I supposed to report on this?

This was a tradegy, a massacre, a freaking national incident.
Yet, the next story he was supposed to report on after that was Eidolon saving a family of five from a flood.
...
It was just another indication that the people running Channel Four news had no idea how to run a story like this. A story like this needed timing, needed context to hit the full force of the viewer and more importantly, needed some functioning and experienced reporters to convey the facts across. If you told a report like this too coldly, the public wouldn't get the idea of the impotance of it and most likely skip over it in their minds. If you told it too emotionally... well, you would probably break down halfway through.

Around John was organised chaos. Cameramen checked the feed from their cameras, the controllers in the booth above prepared all of those fancy graphics and cuts that would accompany the hourly report and the different reporters read through the stories that they were going to give to the public.
Which meant John was reading about Winslow High School, a school in an out of the way city that had been absolutely slaughtered.

Out of 2135 students, only 245 of them survived.

This wasn't an Endbringer attack, people were used to those, or a Slaughter House 9 attack which no longer shocked with its high death rates.
No, this was an ordinary day where parents sent their kids to school but were told that they didn't have a kid anymore by the end of it.
In a way, this was more horrifying than anything monsters like the S9 could do.

John took a look at his co-host. Sarah Waller was a professional journalist like him, she had been unfortunate to start her career in Channel Three's controversial "SlaughterWatch", a segment in the news that was made to solely report on what the Slaughterhouse Nine and other similar threats like them were doing. That meant that she had found a way to be able to report the actual facts without actually getting emotionally involved with the story.
He knew this as he had seen her using an emotionless monotone earlier today after the Winslow story first broke. It would help her actually report the facts but she wouldn't be able to get the viewers emotionally invested to what she was saying. If it was up to her, those viewers far away from Brockton Bay wouldn't see News of Winslow any different from Scion saving another stranded kitten.

Isn't that a horrible truth that we reporters have to actually try to get our viewers to care about this? What happened to the world in the last fifty years?

He would have preferred anyone else to be his co-anchor but the one who was supposed to be with him in the upcoming show, Jamie Andrews, had left, saying that she was sick. It wasn't hard to realise that Jamie hadn't reacted well to what she was supposed to report on today with John's substantial experience in journalism. John had been around to report on the Communist revolution in Cuba and he had seen a lot over about fifty years in journalism. People had told him to retire long ago, but he had always laughed at them as he told them that he loved reporting more than sleep. Today was one of those days that tested his love in Journalism but if he wasn't here, Sarah would definately screw it up.

Reading further, he came across something that interested him.
Hmm, it wasn't the PRT who saved the day this time but some kid called... Greg Veder? Interesting times...

With a sigh, John heeded the warning of the cameramen that they were about to go live and gave the cameras his most heartfelt experssion.

"Good Afternoon America. Today, I am sorry to bring you more news of the great tragedy that happened this morning..."

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Juliet Veder sliently closed the door to her son's room, giving him a last look as she tried to convince herself that he was alright.
It wasn't working.

"Don't worry, Honey. He's home. He's okay."
Juliet looked at the love of her life, Christian Veder. His brown eyes were full of worry despite his words and his normally immaculate white hair and shirt were ruffled in worry. She was sure that her blouse and bright blonde hair were in similar states of disarray.
"He isn't fine Chris. He was on the news and they said that he was in the middle of all this and that he went around shooting those monsters. He brought a gun home for goodness sake!" She said as loudly as she could without waking her sleeping son in the other room.

Christian sighed as he brought Juliet against him, with only a minor protest from her as she enjoyed the embrace.
"Yes they did, but he is here, he is home now. If what the News said is true, then he saved those people Jule. Many parents aren't as lucky as we were today and without our boy, they wouldn't be any lucky parents. We can ask him about what happened."
Juliet felt a tear come to her eye. She knew that her husband was right but she couldn't help being scared for Greg. Her son had actually saved people at Winslow, her son that did nothing but sit on his computer and go to school. When she had seen the initial news of an attack, she had been on the verge of panicking and rushing to Winslow to try and find her son.
Little had they known that he had come home while the broadcast was on, showered and went to bed.

"He is grounded for a month..." She eventually said in her husband's arms, her voice having a joking tilt to it.
"For making us worry? Make that a year." Her husband joked along as they simply stood in the hallway enjoyed each other's company, happy that their son was safe.

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Director Emily Piggot had seen a lot during her career in the PRT but little compared to the shit show at Winslow.

She half-heartedly listened as the last commanding officer remaining from the officers sent to Winslow gave her report. There were hundreds of things that Emily could have done to try and protect those troopers lives. She could have told Renard to fire without the Directive that would have made it to regulations. She could have Coopted the BBPD to help, putting their lives on the line as well in order to have increased risk for everyone. She could have begged, borrowed or even stole more armed APCs earlier in the year when she had complained that there weren't enough. She wasn't trying to pull a Tagg but she had made her objections very audible when she had found out that there were only two lethal APCs and only two that had been configured for containment foam deployment. She could have even armed her officers with the very potent weaponry that they had confiscated from the gangs, regulations be damned.

It was clear that, in the end, the fault lay with the heads of the PRT, its regulations and Emily's adherence to both.
Hopefully, her adherence to the rules would give her the power to make sure that this never happened again...
But for now, she had to deal with more immediate concerns.

"Lieutenant Atkinson," Emily interrupted the tired PRT trooper. "What do you think of the parahuman you mentioned?"
Emily had been interested when she had seen the young teenager that had pretty much saved the scattered PRT troops from the monsters outside Winslow on the helmet cameras. He had clearly been affected by... something. Whether it was some sort of substance or power, all that mattered was that one teenager had managed to kill an entire field of monsters with speed, strength and some sort of regeneration. One aspect that bothered her was the sheer brutality that he had used. He only used his hands even though there was clearly a perfectly servicable weapon strapped to his back. That implied that the boy, Greg Veder according to witness accounts, either couldn't or didn't want to actually do so until the battle had ended.

That didn't speak well for the teen's mental state during the use of his power and that meant severe casualties, collateral or otherwise. However, Emily didn't know the nature of the power itself and acting on incomplete information could cause a lot of problems. That was why Greg wasn't being called into the PRT building just yet, even though Emily would have been happy to get such an unknown away from civilians.
Though, The fact that he had saved over two hundred people from what looked like a mini-Ellisburg was something that needed to be considered as well.

Atkinson looked uncertain, her green eyes staring into space, past her messy red hair, as she tried to think of a response. Emily had seen June Atkinson's name on her desk quite a few times, mostly relating to exceptional conduct and good analytical skills.
"He," She started before stopping, considering her words. "From what he said, It didn't seem that he thought that he was a parahuman, despite his clearly superhuman performance in the fight before."
Emily nodded. It wasn't uncommon for Parahumans to be unaware of their own power use, often with disastrous consequences.
"But," Atkinson began again, a gloved hand rubbing her chin thoughtfully. "If I had to guess, it didn't look like anything he could do for too long. After the last hostile was destroyed he had collapsed on the ground, barely moving and breathing heavily. It looked similar to someone being exhausted due to an unfamiliar and intense work-out. It seemed like this... Bezerker state is a power that can't be used often..."

"Or not part of his power at all." The Director finished. It wasn't that big of a stretch to believe actually. There were tinkertech serums and devices that could give people the illusion of powers or even temporary powers. In a chaotic mess that Winslow had become, It wasn't hard to imagine that Veder might have found something to augment his own powers or if the powers themselves were from the parahuman's who had attacked the school in the first place.

"What do you think, Armsmaster?" Emily asked the silent Parahuman in the room with them.

Armsmaster had been leaning on the wall on the far side of the office. Despite his... tendencies, he disliked contributing to debriefings with questions or his own comments unless spoken to first. When you can get sufficent information from the written report, why bother with an inefficient debriefing? His focus on efficiency often Irked Emily, often to the point that she would have knocked his head straight if she had been in better shape, damaged kidneys or not. He often missed the human element when making decisions and in such a posistion as a leader of the protectorate, that was often a costly mistake that they couldn't afford.

Of course, after today, Emily was sure that he had more than enough reason to avoid contributing.

He was a mess. From where she was sitting, Emily could see all the evidence of Armsmaster's efforts on his armor. Along with the multitude of scratches and small holes, red streaks of blood dominated areas that were hard to wipe down, showing just how red his armour must have been after the fight and just how many creatures the Parahuman had killed. The large dent in the middle of his chest plate kept drawing Emily's eyes even as he pushed off the the wall with the screaming of damaged hydraulics coming from the same armor.

It reminded her of how close he had been to losing.

Now standing, Armsmaster made his way to the large screen on the opposite wall, to the left of Emily, with each step being accompanied by a soft grinding noise.
"I didn't interact with the teenager personally," Armsmaster started, switching the screen to several images of different coloured orbs in containment cases and one picture of a pretty teenage brunette. "However, from the testimony of Jessica Winters and the amount of... Artifacts we are still finding around the school, I am led to believe that Lieutenant Atkinson's theory might be correct."
"With the variety of powers demonstrated by the two types of creature and the colour of this orb," He pointed to a red coloured orb. "Shares the colour of the energy in the teenagers veins during his Bezerk state, It indicates a possible correlation."
Emily leaned forward as she interlocked her fingers.
"So you are saying that these orbs bestow powers? Possibly to normal people?"

The horizontally shaking head was her answer.
"Ms Winters is still being interviewed but from what she described to the officers who found her, the presence of Mr Veder's powers are unmistakeable even if their nature is unknown."
Emily nodded.
"So what would you do, Armsmaster?" Emily asked. This Greg had been spotted going home from Winslow through numerous reports of a "bloodied man" using the public busses. Any confrontation could be dangerous with the unknown nature of his power but at the same time, leaving him alone could be dangerous for the populace of Brockton Bay. It was a tough decision and she was curious to see what the Protectorate leader's opinion was.
"My recommendation would be to simply observe Mr Veder for now. With the possibly volatile nature of his power, confronting him at his home could end disastrously and he doesn't seem to be an active threat to the city as he managed to use public transport with little incident. Gaining additional information would be the best for now until we can make an informed decision or the situation changes."

Emily hummed in agreement. She had a similar idea.
"Lieutenant Atkinson," Emily addresed the PRT officer. "Thank you for your assesment. Please report to your duty officer for your next assignment."
"Mam?"
Emily leaned back in her chair, ignoring the creaking that it made as she did so.
"I don't believe that this is going to be an isolated incident. Winslow school had been neutral territory for a long time and is one of the places where armed response was going to take the longest to get to. I believe that this was a planned attack and it isn't going to be the last one. So I am transferring you and those with the experience to a task group I am forming for future attacks. You can refuse, but you could save a lot of lives. Dismissed."
The Trooper nodded her head and gave the director a salute
"Yes, Mam!"

Then it was only Emily and Colin.
"That... Isn't exactly standard procedure."
Emily sighed.
"I know. But after everything, I wasn't going to rely on procedure to keep this city safe."
Emily rubbed her forehead, the stress of the day was definitely related to the migraine she had been ignoring until now.
"I can't believe Tagg was right..."
Even with his helmet on, Emily could tell that Armsmaster was giving her a puzzled look.
"Director Tagg? What was he right about?"

Emily looked up, staring at Armsmaster straight in the visor. Seriousness clear in her expression. This wasn't easy for her to admit. Tagg was considered unhinged for a reason and after giving so much to the PRT...
But after what happened today...

"The PRT might be designed to fail..."

==================================================================

Taylor couldn't believe what was happening.
She had only woken up an hour ago but she couldn't tell how much time had passed.
They had told her that it had only been a few hours since she had been taken out of the Locker, something that she couldn't remember.
The news had said that Winslow had been attacked, despite her memories of everything being fine that morning.
She had expected to feel something about that but it had felt as if she had started to feel everything at once and then simply felt nothing.

A small part of her said that she was in shock as she laid in the hospital bed.
Most of her was actually staring at the cockroach in her hand. The cockroach that had obeyed her to sit there.
She had watched as a third mandible grew from the bottom of its head. She had watched as two feelers had sprouted from its leg.
She had watched the carpace crack, some of them glowing with a red light.

She couldn't believe what was happening.

====================================================================

Fortuna watched the video feed with interest.
She watched as she saw her friend, Rebecca, appear in her office with a flash of light. Looking around the room, she had made her way to the computer and typed something into it.

Then 'she' spoke.
"Captain Renard, This is Chief Director Costa Brown. DO not fire on the targets! Repeat, Do not fire on the transformed civilians!"
Fortuna then watched as the local director objected demanding an explanation.
'Rebecca' smiled.

"Director Piggot, we have no idea what we are dealing with here and it would be best to not stir the hornet's nest until we have a better understanding of the situation." Somehow she managed to get a completely serious tone across even as 'Rebecca' grinned from ear to ear.

Now even the now-deceased captain spoke up. It looked like the woman was trying to suppress laughing out loud.

"You have your orders, Captain."

After typing something into the computer, she turned to the camera. She gave a smiling wave as she was consumed in another flash of orange light.

It was only seconds later that a rectangular portal appeared and Fortuna's friend, Rebecca Costa Brown, stepped into her office for the first time in the video. Her almost trademark scowl, clear on her face.

"You're right, Rebecca. We do have a big problem."

====================================================================
When I woke up, it was with the normal grogginess that I had gotten used to from a lifestyle of gaming and late nights.
What wasn't familiar was the sheer amount of agony I felt from my overworked muscles.

It was then that the events of yesterday went through my mind and I realised just how much I'd have to explain to my Parents...

"Shit."

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AN: While writing this, I realized that I didn't really like Brian as a character in early Worm so I apologise if his section is a bit choppy. He's just so bland... I guess I'll have to throw some character development his way.

As Always, I tried to be subtle with some details so keep an eye out for them.

Inq. Halbread · Jun 4, 2017

So guys. Have a chapter!

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In my opinion, even after two weeks after closing the portal to Hell itself, It still felt weird being stared at by random people.

I guess it wasn't surprising. Not many people at Winslow had survived in the end, only about two hundred or so of the students who had shown up that day, making each survivor a practical miracle in the eyes of the public. Add in the fact that I had apparently saved way more people than I had thought during my rampage through the school halls and that was why I was now a household topic of conversation thanks to many of those said survivors mentioning me by name.

It was also why two teenage girls were currently staring at my back and whispering to each other a few seats behind me on the bus was not making me paranoid, just significantly uncomfortable.

Waking up the morning after Winslow was so surreal that I had actually gotten dressed to go to school, ready for a long day of academic learning. That was, until I saw my shotgun resting ontop of my computer.
And when my parents had entered my room and 'politely' asked me to explain what had happened.
One does not simply ignore one's parents when they 'ask', so I told them everything. Everything considered, my parents had been remarkably understanding of what I had done. My mom had called bullshit on the demons though, completely believing that the transdimensional monsters were some cape creation, and my dad had just mentioned that it seemed that good timing seemed to be a family trait and then subtly winked at me. From the way mom had playfully hit his shoulder, I could guess what he was referring to and I had wisely refrained from investigating further.

I had, of course, asked how they knew about what I had done and they had showed me what was on the TV.
It was a news report, with my face center-stage as the presenter regurgitated half-investigated facts on what I had done that day. I honestly didn't know how they had heard about the fight between me and the "Royal Demon" but it really wasn't a solo confrontation where I had saved the hostages taken by the "psychopathic Inhuman/Case 53 cape" single-handedly. Jessica had done that, and if it hadn't been for her then I had a feeling that it would have been worse than having no survivors to save…
Jessica, however, went unmentioned and I was lauded as the "Hero of Winslow".

I hated it...

One of the questions I had blurted out had been to ask why. Why was I getting this much attention when they had a literal piles of dead PRT officers who had protected the students who had gone outside? When there were those few people who had fought against the demons and failed but managed to save at least a few lives? What about that Janitor and those gang members who had kept people safe in the storage room behind them?
Why was I getting all the credit?
One of things that I had done after seeing that was to go on PHO and try to deflect the praise off me onto those people more deserving.
That was the reason that Void Cowboy was now banned off PHO for at least a month and I just had to deal with people staring at me in the street on the rare occasions that I left my house, which was thankfully unknown by the media. Then again, they used a Prep School photo of me for their news report so I didn't think they knew that much about me.

All that didn't matter now though. I could deal with a few stares or the flashes of camera phones from rich girls. What mattered was the person I was currently ignoring next to me.
I had no Idea who the red-headed boy was who had spotted me at the bus stop was, but since he had sat next to me on the bus, he hadn't stopped talking. I'm sure he was a pretty cool guy as well and I had even tried getting engaged in the discussion that was happening at me.
Unfortunately, he only wanted to talk about my "exploits", a topic I wasn't really into discussing today.

"So?" My mind focused on his question,
"Sorry man, I wasn't listening." I apologised truthfully. He smiled at me.
"No problem," he replied in a chipper tone. "I noticed that you were off in your own world and was reciting movie speeches for the last ten minutes." He then leaned back in his seat, hands behind his head. "So what were you thinking about while I quoted Rocky at you?"
"Nothing much," I said with a sigh. "Just wondering where my life has gone for the past two weeks."
"Hey, I know that feeling. I've had virtually no free time for at least a week. Assignments suck. Same with you?"
"No, I did actually have an assignment but I don't think anyone is actually going to mark it." He winced, whether from my neutral tone of voice or my answer I didn't know.
"Damn. Winslow right?" I nodded. "Shit man, I'm sorry. I'm sure you have more to deal with than Math projects."
"Well, I'm pretty sure that my math project was on fire for a while there, so I'm pretty sure that that you were probably better off." I joked, hoping to lighten the mood.

He gave me a smile that seemed to have a tinge of pity.
"Really? Two weeks of having nothing but time and that's what you come up with?" He asked, the Pity-Grin on his face somehow gained even more pity.

"Oh?" I asked with a raised eyebrow and a half smile. "You think you could have done better?"
"Of course!" He loudly proclaimed. I even noticed some of the passengers watching his antics with rapt attention. I guess there was little better to do after all. "I swear I can do better or my name isn't Dennis Danger Dynamite!"
"It's probably not..."
"It actually is dude."
I shook my head in disbelief. Dennis was okay, Dynamite was weird but still believable... Dennis Danger Dynamite was waaay too unbelievable for me.
"Come on. Really? You expect me to believe that someone actually named their kid 'Danger' so that their initials were triple Ds? What next? Are you going to give me another 'd' so that your name is a nice even number?"
I noticed he was smiling brightly at me.
"What?"
"So..." I could literally here the smugness in his tone. "You want me to give you another 'D', huh?"
...
It took me a moment to realise what Dennis meant.
"Damn dude, don't make my words weird." I complained as he laughed at my embarrassed expression.

Dennis took a second to stop laughing at my expense and lay back into his seat before looking at me with a mischievous expression.
"So what's your name then? Its probably as weird as mine is," He stopped, a puzzled expression on his face. "Umm. What is your name anyway?"
"Greg Veder," I answered him directly and was surprised by a large, masculine gasp behind my seat and two quiet feminine squees a few rows behind me. Apparently I was enough of an instant celebrity that people were treating me as some sort of cape already...
God dammit.

"See?" Dennis continued on obliviously. "Your name is like, the ultimate pun!"
Dennis stood up, the subtle shifting of the bus not bothering him in the slightest as he bowed in my direction.
"Surely you forgive my impudence Darth Veder?" He asked in a terrible british accent.
"Oh, Wow. A Star Wars pun regarding my name. I've never heard that one before..." When you had a dad who loved Star Wars as much as you did, such puns were thrown around often.
"It's a lot better than your attempt. Give me time and I'll have a whole book of puns. I promise only half of them will be related to Star Wars"
"Great..." I rolled my eyes at his teasing while his grin told me he wasn't going to stop soon.

"Wait," Dennis looked at me with a contemplative expression. " You're that Greg aren't you? The guy who saved Winslow?"
"I have no idea what you are talking about." I quickly answered. Too quickly if the way he smiled was any indication.
"You are! The guy who can rip through creatures and capes with nothing but a smile and a hunger for the vengeance of destroyed homework!"
I had to raise my eyebrow at that.
"Really?"
"Or at least that's what PHO is saying about you. You personally don't look like the 12-foot Man of Doom that they said you were."
"I know," I let out my despair. "Man of Doom is a terrible name and I even tried to tell them that but I got banned for questioning my own 'achievements'."
"Oh shit," He looked at me with renewed interest. "You're that guy too. Dude, that argument that you got into with Glory Girl and Bagrat was legendary!"

I groaned into my palm as Dennis started to relay a play by play of the argument that I had with the two online. Bagrat was commonly known as "The Guy in the know" on PHO due to his tendency of sniffing up facts about any IRL topic that PHO could dig up. The problem with that was that most of the "facts" one could find on what happened at Winslow were either false or greatly exaggerated. Being the good internet citizen that I was, I decided to help him out by correcting some of the inaccuracies. I don't know if it was something I had said but apparently he didn't believe me and an argument began, ironically about the validity of things I didn't actually do.

As it turned out, most of PHO seemed to be on Bagrat's side. Thankfully, my skill at destroying my own reputation was good enough that I had actually began to win, refuting their points with the ease of someone who had way too much time on their hands, which I thankfully actually had.

Then, the GloryNation had attacked.
That was the name for the fans of Glory Girl who had joined PHO purely because of her and followed her posts almost religiously. So when Glory Girl had come out in favor of my greatly exaggerated alter-ego she had brought an army that had flooded the forum thread with spammed insulting comments and arguments of little to no substance. The internet fight had been long, tiring and mindbreakingly complicated through the sheer number of arguments that had cropped up against me. I finished the fight when I revealed my ultimate play, that I was Greg.

The fight finished because I immediately got banned afterwards for impersonation.
...
Yeah. They couldn't believe I was me. Despite my frustration, I had a good chuckle at that idea.

"So, how are you dealing with your extended vacation from posting?" Dennis asked as I dimly recognised that I had missed what he was talking about.
"Eh. It's okay. I don't post too often anyway. I do miss trolling Vista's fandom though."
"Oh really?" He asked, interestingly attentive to the subject. "What do you do? To the fans I mean."
I sat in thought. Did I tell him about calling them lolicons, something that no known person wants to be known as, or posting Vista's impressive arrest record, which irritates those who think Vista is just a precious pre-teen.
"Do you know that guy who makes that Endbringer art? That art that shows off the heroes fighting against the Endbringers in different cities?" I asked him.
"Yeah, it looks pretty sweet. I really like the one where Behemoth and Alexandria are about to punch each other. What about him?"
"Turns out the guy is a fan of Vista as well." I gave him a smug smile.
I enjoyed the look of realization that dawned on Dennis' face.
"So he makes art of her... And you post those on the boards..."
"Yup," my smile morphed to a grin. "There is nothing like a battle-hardened, weary Vista to troll all the fans that think she is just another twelve year old."
Dennis laughed.
"Do they seriously complain about that?"
I nodded back as he laughed again but then I noticed something important.

"Aaaaaaand here is my stop." I said as I got out of my seat and hit the button that would tell the bus to stop. I turned back to Dennis.
"It was nice meeting you Dennis, but Ive got quite a list of things to do today."
"Same here. I'll see you after you guys get transferred to Arcadia next month ."
It was a short wait for the bus to come to a stop and with a wave of farewell to Dennis, I got off the bus, trying to completely ignore the looks that the other passengers were giving me.
Stupid TV News...

The bus had dropped me off in an especially rundown area of the Docks. It had always surprised me that an area with all these decaying buildings and abandoned streets could exist in the same city as my clean and well occupied neighborhood. Decrepit and vandalised buildings surrounded me, creating an atmosphere of destitution and poverty. I could see warehouses further down the road in the direction of the bay proper. It was an almost certainty that those same warehouses were abandoned by the companies that once owned them, either standing vacant or likely housing a significant number of unpaid tenants. It felt odd, going straight from a suburban setting to some sort of urban dystopia. Thankfully, the weight of Redemption strapped to my back gave me a bit of confidence and a reminder of why I was there.
It also reminded me of my current shortage of shotgun shells, having only found a few that could fit the old shotgun at my house. I guess thats what I got for having a dad that preferred pistols.

I reached into my pocket and witdrew the map inside.
I looked down at it and back up at the surrounding buildings, looking for any signs.
...
Dammit. I thought to myself. I have no freaking clue where I am.
One would think that a map would prevent you from getting lost, but the surrounding area had been deteriorated so much by sheer neglect that I couldn't see where I was.
Even the solitary street sign had been defaced to the point that the original writing was irrecoverable, now replaced by a terribly drawn version of a turd.

That probably meant that I needed to find someone to ask where my destination was .
The only person on the street besides me was a homeless woman who seemed to be sleeping in the doorway of a building that seemed to be on its way to collapsing.
There was also the homeless man being beaten up in a nearby alley by two slightly less scruffy people wearing Merchant colours.
That was probably really bad...
It also wasn't really my problem... Intervening this time would just mean the Merchants would come back later. I also had no idea how time-critical my objective was. What if something really bad happened because I stopped here?

But...

I still needed directions andI didn't really want to wake up the sleeping woman and the man was screaming for help...
A darker part of my mind asked whether he would survive this beating if I didn't step in.

Dammit.
Having made my decision, I steeled myself as I walked towards the ongoing violence. They were going to stop, hopefully running away after seeing someone noticing them, assuming they called the cops or...
Wait, thats actually a good idea, I had a cellphone and getting the police to come would be as easy as telling them... Where... I am...

Looks like I'm bluffing them!

I was surprised that, even though I was walking to them in broad daylight, they seemed to have no clue that I was approaching them.
At least until my foot accidentally hit a discarded soda can, sending it across the alley in a noisy clatter.

The two men looked up at me, ceasing their assault on the man as they stood to their full height. Ironically, I was still taller than them.
"Hey!" The fatter one of the two yelled out to me, a sneer on his dirty face. "This aint no place for you, boy! You better piss off before you get what this guy gets!" The other man laughed, it was a dirty rasping sound.

I came to a stop, staring right in their faces, streaked with mud and showing signs of substance abuse. Before, I would have been dead scared of these two, eager to avoid any sort of conflict and simply keep my head down. But that was before that Monday, and after ripping apart creatures who had no problem with murdering an entire school of children...
To say that I wasn't impressed with two violent druggies was a severe understatement.
"You know, I would actually prefer you to stop beating up that man."
"Oh yeah?" One of the men spoke, an ugly sneer on his face that somehow making the signs of drug abuse more prominent on his face. He seemed to be the leader between the two. "How ya gonna do that, Nazi boy? Gonna call all your skinhead friends so we can beat em up too?"

Nazi Boy? I looked over myself, stopping my attention on my jacket. It was my spare jacket, having lost my blue hoodie when two weeks ago.
It was a black leather jacket that happened to have red lines running across it.
The same colours that the Empire Eighty Eight used.
White skin, blond hair and Empire colours told me exactly how the idiot druggie connected the dots...

And it was fucking retarded.
This was a nice jacket and I should be able to enjoy it without idiots comparing me to some stupid Arayan stereotype. How many of the E88 are blond anyway?
Like a furnace reigniting, I felt the familiar burn of anger in the back of my mind. It wasn't the Scorching of Rage but it was still warm.
I almost missed it...

"No," I replied, having no trouble keeping my voice level and face set in an unimpressed expression. "I don't need anybody to help. I'll stop you myself."
The leader looked towards the other Merchant.
"Cut up this idiot, Terry. Make him regret messing with the Merchants."
"Terry" reached into his moth eaten jacket pocket, an off shade of yellow compared to the rest of the jacket. From that pocket, he withdrew a switchblade and he flicked it open with a cruel grin on his face., The blade seemed dirty. Instead of seeing the glint of stainless steel in the midday sun, the blade was painted with the colour of dry blood. It was almost certain that the blade was well used and the idiot holding it had never cleaned it.

It didn't matter.

As Terry did a horrible impression of stalking toward me, I did nothing. I watched as he came right up to me and brandished his small knife at my midsection. We looked into each other's eyes and he smiled. I have no idea what the idiot saw in them to continue his attempt to stab me.

But as he tried to shove the knife into my chest, it was too late for him.
Far too late for now anyway.

The stab was clumsy and slow, as typical of someone who just had to deal with other idiots in colourful clothing and helpless citizens.
To say that he was surprised when my hand caught his wrist during the stab was an understatement.
"What the fuck?" Terry asked aloud as he tried to pull his arm out of my grip, unable to move my hand a centimeter.
Then my hand, a hand that had ripped apart demons, a hand that was forced to use plastic cups because mom was tired of cracked glasses, squeezed.
And Terry's wrist collapsed with a crunch of bone.

Terry's screams filled the alleyway as he cradled his hand, the switchblade dropping from his limp fingers as I let go of his arm. Without my arm to support him, Terry fell to the ground, lying in the fetal position while he cried out on pain.
"What the Fuck did you do to Terry, Freak?!" The other merchant yelled at me, reaching for something at his back. I couldn't let him bring whatever gun the thug had stuffed in his pants to bear so I ran.

A second. That was how long it took for me to reach the Merchant and only enough time for him to have gotten a grip on his gun.
I cocked my fist back and swung for his head, making sure to pull my punch.
As it impacted a face that had only just realised I was next to him, I heard a crack and the man's jaw break as he was lifted into the air.
When he hit the ground, landing on his back, he didn't get up again.

Almost instantly, I felt my anger leave me like a light, leaving me feeling as though you had just left a warm spot near the fire. You were still warm but you could feel the cold creeping in.

What had I done? Why was I that mad? Was it because I hadn't gotten in a fight for two weeks? Was I craving a fight?
My mental questioning was cut off when the homeless man, the man I had gone to save, coughed as he started standing from the floor. There was a time for introspection and it wasn't now, so I went up to him and offered my hand to help him up off the floor.

"Th-Thanks." The man stammered as he grabbed my hand and I helped him to his feet. "I don't want to seem-COUGH"
The man bent over coughing. I noticed some blood leak from his mouth.
"Are you okay? Do I need to call an ambulance?" I asked the man. I honestly didn't think his injuries were that bad but considering that I had survived being almost burnt to a crisp without even getting a scar, I was probably the wrong person for an assesment of internal injuries.
"No, don't worry. I've survived worse." The man stood back up, wiping the blood from his chin. "As I was saying, I don't want to seem ungrateful good sir but I'm afraid that I have nothing to give the Empire-"
I raised my hand, cutting off what he was about to say. It honestly felt weird to do that.
"Don't worry, sir. I'm not with the Empire. I just needed some directions."
He gave me a strange look that I figured was a mix between interest and confusion.
"Well, that must be some pretty important directions for you to cripple two Merchants."
I looked at the two, formerly violent Merchants. One lay unconcious, his jaw probably wouldn't heal for months which would leave him mute. The other had also blacked out from the pain, only wimpering occasionally from his crushed bones that would need professional help to ever heal properly again.
…

"I didn't mean to go that far?"
The homeless man scoffed.
"Im serious!"
"Far be it for me to tell a cape on how to act but you might want to get that checked if ya really didn't mean it. Not that I'm complaining, mind you" He said while shaking his head. "Now, about those directions…"

I took out a piece of paper from my pants pocket and unfolded it. I quickly read the list.
"Do you know where… Bull street is?"
"Yup. I do!" He nodded at me. "But, I don't mean to pry but how did you get here if you didn't know the area?"
"I came by bus."
The man's eyebrow raised in confusion.
"Doesn't the bus have a map in it? Close to the door?"
I… didn't know that. I said as much to the man.
"Hmm…" He pondered. "What about the map at the bus stop?"
I turned around and looked towards the bus stop and there, in all its government coloured glory, was a large map of the docks.
The sound of my palm hitting my face filled the alleyway.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It took me some time walking through what was known as the docks, but I finally made it to my destination. In front of me was a large abandoned warehouse. The walls, made out of steel sheeting, were rusting and I could see some holes in them. It was essentially a stereotypical warehouse that you would find in movies and that was especially appropriate considering its reputation.

The homeless man I had saved had told me that people had gone missing around this building, never to be seen again, whether they were homeless, gangers or simply passing through. This place quickly became known as haunted but as I stood there, I knew the real reason that all this had happened.

The air I felt around the building was oppressive, as though it was hoping that you would drop dead any second. It was… familiar but weaker than last time I had felt it.
At Winslow, it had meant that the demons had come.
Hopefully, this meant I was just on the cusp of demons and had to deal with only cultists.

Once again, I pulled out my list from my pocket. It was a list of places that I had been researching since Winslow. Places that I had a feeling were more than they seemed. Places that I worked out to have the highest likelihood of having demons. All of this because a part of me knew that this wasn't dome. That the Demons weren't done.
In the end, I had figured that it was this place and two others that would be most likely to have cultists.
And so far, it seemed I was right,

I steeled my thoughts as I marched to the entrance to the warehouse. If the portal at Winslow had taught me anything, It had taught me that I needed to be quick. I took out Redemption from behind my back, checking if the shells I had loaded into it were still in there.

When I reached the door, I raised my right foot and kicked the door open.
There was no use to hesitating anymore…

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Fields of Desolation. Realm of the Juggernaught

The knight ducked as the last Imp leaped at his head. As it sailed over him, he swung his Obsidian rune sword to bisect it, its demon runes glowing hungrily for the Imp's blood.
Within a second, the Imp fell to the floor in two, lengthwise pieces while the knight himself rose to his full height calmly.

The knight looked around himself at the devestation he had caused. All around him were the corpses of the demons that had been the latest hunting party sent to kill him. From the mighty Barons of Hell, to the lowliest Unwilling, all of them lay before him on the hellscape, their blood covering his blade making it glint in the Helllight.
The knight breathed out. This wasn't what he wanted to happen today. He was so close and if he took too long...

Looking at the sky, The knight figured that he had at least a few hours to get there before the portal opened, if his memory was correct.
The knight moved on from the scene of destruction he had caused. He had to get there in time.

Or things would go extremely poorly...

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Inq. Halbread · Sep 10, 2017

One Week Ago.

To Lucy, returning to Hell was a risky proposition.
Yes, her Lord had specifically tasked her with infiltrating her former home, her young age as a demon leaving her plenty of memories to draw on for how humans still acted.
As shitty as those memories were…

The older Succubae had complained but in the end, she had been the one sent to New York, the city where she was born in.
The city where she had killed in.
The city where she had been killed in.

From the second she had stepped out of the portal into an abandoned alleyway, she had been hit with the enormity of it all. For once in her unlife she didn't taste blood and smoke in the air. She could feel a gentle breeze in the air. She could even smell the aroma of sloppily made food, left to rot in the nearby dumpster.
Despite it being over ten years since her death at the hands of some drugged out gangster it had felt like she had never left, like she had never died in the first place.

Except of course of how she had changed.
And how the words of her Lord still echoed in her head.

She could remember of how much the PRT used to boast about its ability to find Changers and Strangers of all kinds, Parahumans who had powerful infiltration abilities. Thinking back, that must have been why she had been so nervous in those early days as she made her way into Los Angeles, shapeshifting into others often and only feeding occasionally. However, after tons of careless mistakes and silencing witnesses, it turned out that those boasts were nothing but a bold faced lie to her.
It had especially become clear when she had managed to enter the office of, arguably, the most powerful woman in America's office without incident, at the exact time her master had ordered her to be there.

It was a success on all counts, her task was successful and she had even got a small reminder of what it was to be human again.
So why, kneeling on the floor before her master's throne, was she so nervous?
"I assume you know the source of my ire." The deep voice of her Lord felt like it penetrated her skull through her ears, such was the power he commanded.
"Yes, my Lord, but I assure you it was for a good reason." she answered as meekly as possible.
The following silence grew to a point where she had to look around the room if only to avoid the insanity that the angered, silent, gaze of her master threatened to bring on her if she focused on it too long.

A Demon Lord's keep was always in contrast to what the rest of Hell was like. They were one of the only actually maintained spaces in the Realm. Instead of caves, ruins and blood there were walls, rooms and possibly even more blood depending on the Lord's preference.
Her Lord was different from the others. While many wished the floor of their throne rooms to be carpeted by the corpses of their rivals and sit upon a throne of skulls, her Lord had gone for a different aesthetic.
The walls were clean and painted bone white, the almost pristine floor was bereft of corpses and the throne itself had been made of solid gold, mined from some decaying world still in the process of integrating into the fields of doom. The only signs of it being inhabited by demons was the Demonic runes on the walls, the Urns of Hellfire that illuminated the hall and the collection of hooks that hung at the sides of the room, each impaling the skeletal form of those who displeased her Lord.

A sympathetic pain blossomed in her rib cage as her gaze passed over their still forms. She knew from experience that those on the hooks were not as dead as they appeared.
Her attention was suddenly brought to the present as she felt her master's hand grab her by her neck and lift her into the air, forcing her to look upon her Lord's armoured form.

Her Lord's size belied his power, only being slightly taller than her but that didn't matter. Her Lord, clad in his robotic black armour, was more terrifying to her than any three meter tall Demon. Her vision was filled by her Lord's vision slit in his helmet, a thin strip that glowed with red Hell energy. The rest of the helmet, the jagged but shaped steel failing to bring her attention away from her Lord's burning gaze. Her Lord looked to one of the hooks in the room as its occupant made a sound at her master's wrath, dragging Lucy's attention away from his hellish gaze and allowing her to see the rest of the Demonic but expertly crafted armour.

"My plan ruined. The entire incursion delayed...." Her Lord spoke softly as though talking to himself more than her.
"THEIR SALVATION DELAYED AS WE STAND AROUND DOING NOTHING!!" Her Lord suddenly roared as she felt his grip on her throat magnify tenfold."NOW, THERE IS MORE TIME FOR THOSE PARASITES TO TAINT THEIR SOULS AND BODIES FURTHER!"
She let out a strangled gurgle as she felt her spine strain under the pressure and she felt her fear for her Lord spike once again, along with… something else.

Maybe she was becoming more like her sisters than she thought?

He was furious and Lucy feared for her soon to collapse spine. Death was… Unpleasant but her Lord wouldn't stop for something as trivial as biological death.
She had died once before after all.

Suddenly, Her Lord's attention returned to her and she winced at his gaze.
"Explain what you were doing on Earth for a WHOLE week and why I shouldn't feed you to your sisters. Piece by piece." He commanded, thankfully quieter but that was a cold comfort to Lucy as she registered what he said.

A hundred excuses and explanations ran through her mind but her Lord's grip was tight, too tight to provide any sound to her rapidly opening and closing mouth. She couldn't speak and her mind went blank with the implications with that.
…
Before she could even imagine her possible punishments, her Lord seemed to realise her trouble and released her, letting her fall to the floor. She took a few grateful breaths as her throat repaired itself, silently thanking her demon biology. Explanations of her absence ran through Lucy's mind. Did she tell him about merely enjoying life as a normal girl for a week? Did she tell him about how many young men and women she had fed on and how they were all important in some way or another, now unable to oppose her master in the future?
Did she tell him about how many Parahumans lay in that list?
Or did she tell him about Him.

"I know who stopped us the first time." She said, choosing the words that would give her the largest chance of survival.

The silence permeated the throne room until her Lord asked one question.
With one word.
"Who?"

Lucy opened her mouth to speak...

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Whether it was the advanced state of decay on the steel door or the strength of my foot, it had only taken one kick to shatter the door's lock and hinges, throwing the door into the warehouse.

Under normal circumstances, I would have probably found another way in, looked for a suitably large hole in the wall or even tried opening the door normally first. However, there were demons involved. That meant that speed was best, kicking down the door was faster and using the door handle was for people who wanted demons.
And no one wanted demons.
Still, the sheer velocity that the door went flying surprised me. I watched stupidly as the door flew through the air and landed in the middle of the room.
Right on top of a glowing symbol.

Yup. I was in the right place.

I stepped into the warehouse slowly, scanning around the room for anything that didn't feel right or looked slightly demonic.
I wasn't disappointed.
The inside of the warehouse was literally a charnel house. All over the room were brutalized corpses, many of them hang from chains connected to the ceiling but many more organised in small gorish piles on the floor, dimly illuminated by glowing symbols on the walls and floors. It was honestly disgusting. I wasn't unfamiliar with things like this, having seen a gruesome scene like this in every game where there were demons or where the writers wanted you to definitely dislike the antagonist.

While I never reacted much while seeing it through out almost every level of Quake, I couldn't help but feel a queasy feeling in my stomach as my eyes roamed over a bloody pile that was definitely not made out of pixels.

I took another few steps, wincing at the sound of blood squelching beneath my trainers. I would definitely have to clean them before I got home but from my new position, I had a better view of the grisly warehouse. It only served to stoke the anger that was already brewing under the surface. Unlike a video game, grisly corpses weren't always like that. Every single skull in this warehouse belonged to a unique person and from what I could see, whoever was using this warhouse as a bloody ritual circle had used hundreds.

They had been doing this when I had been sitting around my house for the last two weeks.

Over a hundred people had been sacrificed as I replayed Space Opera 4 for the tenth time.
…

Fuck.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I had originally thought that the cultists, because at this point it was obvious, that had done this were out looking for more sacrifices for their impromptu slaughterhouse. It was only mildly surprising to find them in the center of the room, with their throats cut and a bloody knife in everyone's hand. It was hard to be anything but angry next to what looked like a massive, glowing ritual circle on top of a huge puddle of blood after all.

To me, it was obvious what had happened here. The cutists didn't have enough sacrifices to finish whatever they were trying to do and had started sacrificing themselves in order to make up the difference.
From the lack of stupid demon shit besides the glowing runes, I decided it was okay to assume that there weren't enough cultists to make up that difference and left nothing but a mass grave compared to the undoubtedly apocalyptic Hell spawn that they probably wanted.

After what seemed to be an hour of searching, I had found nothing particularly demonic sans the obvious glowing runes and corpses.
Nothing, except for a particularly demonic book.

The book itself looked okay. It had a normal, brown leather hardcover and from what I could see, it didn't have any runes on it and it's pages weren't made from human flesh or something like that. In fact, I thought I could remember some old history text books used to look like that.
Nothing survived long in the hands of Winslow students…
So why did I know that the book was demonic?
Mainly because it was lying in a perfectly clear circular section of floor, surrounded on all sides by the puddle of blood it was supposed to be resting in.

Yeah… A book preventing itself from getting bloodstained is pretty demonic in my book, ironically, which was why I had been pointing Retribution at it for the last ten minutes or so, waiting for it to make a move.

Taking another look at the cover of the book, I couldn't help but yawn as I used my free hand to cover my mouth, out of reflex rather than anything else. I felt a vague wariness as I stared at the book, watching its immobile pages for any sign of demonic nonsense.

Maybe it was okay too…
…
Ooh.

That was clever…

I stepped towards the book, raising my foot to prepare a massive stomp on its cover. If I was right...

My foot slammed down on the book, crunching its hardwood cover into the floor an crushing a few of the pages. Almost immediately, I felt what wariness I had been feeling evaporate almost immediately.
"So, it was you." I admonished the book. Honestly, I wasn't sure if the book had been that demonic to have a mind of its own, it had honestly sounded like something out of a fantasy story.
But hey, that was if my foot wasn't already crushing such a book.

"I'm going to lift my foot up and you aren't going to do anything. Otherwise, I am going to keep stomping until you are nothing but scraps of paper."
The book didn't respond.
"Understood?" I asked it, Pressing my sneaker harder into the shattered cover.
I heard the rustling of pages, despite not seeing the book move. Nodding, I took the disembodied sound as a 'yes'. If the worst came to pass then I could always just stomp down again.
I lifted my foot and almost immediately, the book's cover somehow unshattered itself and the crunched paper… uncrunched itself…
In a single moment, the book had returned to its previously pristine condition.

Huh.
I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised. If I was a book, then I wouldn't like to leave my cover in pieces and my paper all over the place.
Unfortunately, that meant that the book had a sense of self. That it just didn't have a sense of self-preservation but pride as well.
That meant that the book could think for itself.
…
Or I had read too many stories about talking books.
…
Nah. Better safe than sorry.

I considered the book on the bloodless circle. It had done nothing since reforming itself, which was good, but it was still a thinking being. Considering it was right next to the massive ritual circle as compared to somewhere on the side of the warehouse, it was obviously used by these cultists somehow. While that spoke to the possible "demoness" of the book, I did note that it only sat there instead of flying around and annoying people on the street. From the circle around the book, I think it was safe to assume that the book did not want to be damaged in anyway, soaked in blood included. Did that mean that it took a lot of power to fix itself? Or was it simply a matter of not wanting to get dirty in the first place? What if it was more power to fix damage than prevent it?
Was it even a matter of energy?

Well, there was one thing for sure. That was a demon book and it could most likely think. Ive seen to many movies where some random pedestrian is tempted by an evil artefact to release its evil McGuffin. I couldn't leave it here, so I hanged the shotgun off the strap on my shoulder and reached down to pick it up.
Then I stopped as I was about to grab it.
Was this what it wanted? Did it just try to play the "Only you can prevent evil" trick? Am I just being paranoid, as valid as that feeling is when literal demons exist? Could I punch the book if I was being duped?

It took me a second to think about it but, in the end, I just grabbed the book.
If it was some big trap, I was stuck in it anyway.

Standing up to my full height, I investigated the book I was now holding. It didn't feel any heavier than a normal book, in fact it felt slightly lighter but that could be because I hadn't picked up a book since Winslow. Opening the book to somewhere in the middle of it, I was greeted with writing that was definitely non-terrestirial.

Flipping through the pages, I saw that on each page was filled with what looked like symbols that seemed to have no rhyme or reason to them. Some seemed to read Right to left but then the symbols below it seemed to be the same but mirrored the other way. On one page, it seemed that the collection of symbols went in a spiral, whether it was an inward or outward direction I did not know. Dimly remembered knowledge from my English class told me that this collection of randomly arranged symbols with almost no discernible structure was probably not a language I could read anytime soon.
So, If it was unreadable, why did I sort-of understand what it said if I just focused a bit?
…
Oh, Magic book. Right.

So, If the magic book idea was correct, then the symbols must be some type of Rune for demons or something. Then, why could I read it? Was it something that the book did for the reader or was it somehow related to what I did at Winslow?
"What are you?" I absently asked the book, not expecting an answer at all.
The book answered… Kind of.

As soon as I had asked the question, the book came to life. The pages flipped themselves until they stopped somewhere around the end of the book where a symbol on the page got significantly darker until it was easily distinguishable from the other runes on the mess of a page. I focused on the specific rune.

A Book. It said.

Haha. Very funny.

"Seriously this time?"
The book flipped to a different page and highlighted a different rune.
Small animal.

Tired of the book's nonsense, I started loosening my grip over a particularly dirty section of floor. Before I could drop it, the book quickly flipped to a page in the beginning of the book and Highlighted and underlined two very specific runes.

Codex Demonalis.

Huh. Interesting. I thought to myself.
"Tell me more." I commanded the book.
And it did.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
It turns out that I was right about what happened to the cultists. They had been attempting to open a portal to the Hell Dimension, which was apparently actually a thing and not some sort of alien dimension but a place where souls went, and had failed miserably.

Or more, succeeded miserably.

What they had wanted to do was make something called a "Gore Nest", a sort of bizarre organic, living Idol that would create a small portal to Hell. This portal wasn't big or powerful enough to allow things to come through. It would have been more like an umbilical cord to this dimension, providing something known as "Hell energy" to make future rituals easier and less resource intensive. While my mind was still reeling at the implication that, yes this was all satanic stuff and not some sort of eldritch extra-dimensional science, I could see that the requirements to make a Gore Nest were small, like five people small. The cultists, either compensating for some sort of interference, which the book noted that it does happen often, or simply being overzealous, had overfed the Gore Nest ritual.

As it turns out, over feeding a Gore Nest turned it into a Gore Hive, a sort of inferior version of a Hell Mouth according to the book.

Gore Hives were like a Gore Nest but their portal was capable of physical transport. This pretty much meant that entire armies of demons could travel physically or teleport through. However, the Gore Hive needed a Demon to act as an anchor for the tunnel to connect to, something which the cultists didn't have access to thankfully. This was different to a Hell Mouth which was a straight tear between dimensions with no limits to It, maintained by an artefact or demon on the Hell-side of the Mouth. I could only assume that the Cultists had misread the book's instructions and decided to kill themselves to complete the ritual, even though it wouldn't help at all.

So where did the book come into this?

According to the Codex's forward, the "Demon Lord" had commissioned that these books were to be made for the cultists working on Earth Bet. Not trusting the Zealots to actually read the book, it was made sentient as a sort of assistant, translator and search function for the user of the book. Armed with intelligence, the Codex was to ensure that the Cultists were actually successful with their demonic endevours.

As efficient and clever as that plan is, I was somewhat happy that people still didn't consult the manual.
After learning all this, my next thought was that the book must have had something to get rid of the Ritual circle. Literally any cultist could come along and finish the ritual properly so It needed to be destroyed.

That was how I was now outside in an alley facing the riual warehouse, looted backpack on my back to carry the book I held in my hands.
"Okay Codex," I started, avoiding the same mistake the cultists made. "How do I get rid of the Ritual?"
The book flipped to the page detailing how to do the Gore Hive ritual.
"No, not complete the ritual." I sighed. While completing it would technically get rid of it, it wasn't what I wanted. Like any search function, I guess I needed to use very specific words.

"How do I destroy a ritual?" I asked.
The book flipped to a page about summoning something called a Titan, the book then highlighted that it was known to destroy everything around it.
"No… Codex, How can I destroy a ritual rune?"
The book flipped to a page detailing how to draw runes and highlighted something in the warnings section.
"Runes are very precise… not a physical entity…" I mumbled as I skimmed through the section. "able to be damaged by excess sorcery…"
That was It!
…
Although I had no Idea how to do sorcery…
"Book, What spell can destroy non-physical entities."

The pages of the book started flipping and I could only hope that it actually had a section on sorcery. I let out the breath that I was holding when the book stopped on a page close to the end of the book.

Hellfire.
A basic technique used by most of the Forces of Doom. While Instinctual for the chosen of Hell, a simple incantation and a source of Hell energy, such as a sacrifice, is all that it takes for one of the devout to use the most base of gifts.

I stopped reading there. Even the level 1 spells of the book needed a ritual sacrifice…
I felt a mixture of relief and mild disappointment at the fact that literal spell casting was to be forever beyond the reach of anyone who wasn't an omnicidal maniac.

"This doesn't help." I told the book, pointedly.
The book didn't flip to another page but simply highlighted a small selection of the runes.
Source of Hell energy.
"What do you mean?" I asked the book. "I'm not going to kill someone to act like a pyromaniac."
The runes simply got darker and were underlined.
…
Oh.
It meant any source of Hell Energy and I was standing right next to a building that was covered in it.
That was what it meant right?

Only one way to find out I suppose.

I quickly read the instructions, eager to do something I had wanted to do ever since I had played my first fantasy game.
"Okay, the book says I should stand like this," I spoke softly to myself as I positioned my feet so that my right foot was closer to the warehouse than the left so that I could handle the recoil of the launch of fire.
"Now, to say the incantation and point my dominant hand at the target of Doom's wrath." I mocked the wording of the instructions. If you looked beyond the religious-like speech, it amounted to speak and fire. Ignoring the fact that it did not explain how you were supposed to sacrifice someone and do all the flame steps, It had honestly felt like I had just picked up An Idiot's guide to being a Warlock or something like that.

I raised my Right hand in the direction of the Warehouse, placing the book down at my feet, and spoke the magic words of power…

"Far Fumek"

And proceeded to butcher those same words of power.

I looked down at the incantation again. Dammit, how did you pronounce that?
"Come on. Far Fuumeck"
Nothing happened as a result of both my inability to pronounce the language of Demons and my wild flailing in the direction of the still unignited building.
"Dammit." Maybe it was my stance that was wrong?
I aimed both hands at the building like that one sorcerer I had seen in a cartoon once, with my fingers in a clawed pose and my hands closer to my face.

"Let's try it again. Far…"
"What the fuck are you doing?" said a heavily accented voice next to me.
Turning my head, I saw a large Asian man in red and green clothes. Behind him were many other people, some of them were looking at me like I was insane and quite a few of them were grinning with malice in their eyes.
All of them were Asian with red and green clothes.
Damn. This was ABB territory wasn't it.
I was currently wearing a red and black jacket and I suddenly became aware of how much blood I had gotten on my shoes by wondering around the warehouse.

"…Fomuk." I finished with a combination of what I was trying to say and a profanity at how much this was going to suck to explain…

Suddenly, I felt a burning sensation in my left hand and a tingling sensation throughout my body as though something was collecting in my hand. Looking at my hand, I was shocked to see a large glowing ball of red fire collecting in my hand, tendrils of flame erupting from my hand to feed the ball so it got even bigger. That was only for a second though as soon as it had collected in my hand, the next second it launched from my hand, almost throwing me from my awkward standing position from the sheer force of it.
I could do nothing but stare as the ball of fire swiftly collided with the warehouse's steel walls and immediately set it alight. I watched dumbly as the steel grew red hot and seemed to melt away, the fire spreading all over the warehouse.

In a few seconds, the whole building was in the process of melting.

I turned to look at the gang members and was surprised to see that they weren't staring at the casual dismissal of physics that the Hellfire was partaking in but rather at me with sheer horror on their faces.
"Cape…" The lead one breathed out.
"No." I felt the strange need to correct him.
With that, the horror spell they seemed to be under shattered as someone in the crowed screamed.
"Cape! Run!" and other variations of that were screamed as the group ran away, leaving me alone next to a melting warehouse.
Huh… Hopefully that won't bite me later.
I look back to the warehouse, noting that the roof had collapsed and I could see that there were even more fire coming through the now missing roof. I looked down to the book, wondering if there was some sort of limit to the fire, noticing that it was currently burning steel which wasn't exactly flammable. Reading on, I felt my face grow slack as I read one passage in particular.

The Flame takes sustenance from the very life that it consumes. It will not stop until the very essence of its foe has been consumed in the essence of Hell.
If that's true then…
With the…
Hundreds of bodies…

I looked to the raging inferno, apparently being fuelled by the life force of over a hundred people. Maybe having a it just in the open like that was going to be just fine?
I spotted a trail of fire casually igniting the concrete of the side walk.
Yup. Just fine…

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In the End it had only taken the Fire department a few minutes to get to the warehouse.
I guess a blazing red fire was hard to miss.

That having been dealt with by people more professional than I was, made my way to the second place that I needed to check out.
With a quick rinse of my shoes to get the blood off them and stashing away the magic book in my looted backpack along with my gun, I made my way to a specific townhouse in the suburbs next to the docks district only to find two PRT vans outside with assorted, heavily armoured troopers milling around outside.
Standing outside the crime scene, I noticed that the PRT officers had a new type of badge on their armour. It looked like they had added a white skull just above the standard PRT logo but the skull's mouth was slightly open, making the badge look a whole lot more sinister.

My thoughts were interrupted by a ruckus inside the house as a trooper dragged out a struggling dark-haired woman in handcuffs. It was admirable to how stoic the trooper was as he struggled with the screaming woman to direct her to one of the vans.

"You do not understand!" She screamed to everyone who could listen. "The Master will save us. We will all die and you are damning our souls to Purgatory."
With a single shove, she broke free of the trooper's grip and fell to her knees. The trooper tried to grab her again but the cultist was too quick and managed to scramble away.
Looking around, she froze when she spotted something and an expression of pure rage formed on her face. I dimly realised that she was staring at me.

"YOU!" She yelled at me even as the Trooper got a hold of her again and began dragging her to the vans. "Your blasphemy doomed our world's safety. You let the Parasites feast on even more victims for what? You will die first and then this world will be saved!"
"Yeah, yeah." The trooper said as he finally got her to the van and shoved her in. "I'll be sure to put threatening someone's life as an extra next to the huge amount of murder charges you nutjobs are getting too."

Wait…
Damn. I had forgotten to actually talk to the PRT about what had happened two weeks ago.
I hadn't even talked to them when I left Winslow.
How had I forgotten this?!

Hearing a familiar voice, I turned my head to see a red-haired trooper, holding her helmet in her hands and talking to a masked trooper who was taking photos of the house. I recognised her as the trooper that had talked to me before I had gone into the school to stop that portal.

Deciding to leave before anyone took notice of me, I quickly made my way down the street, trying to make myself as unnoticeable as possible.
...
No! Why was every trooper starting to look at me now?

"Greg?" a voice to my side asked.
I immediately had to suppress the urge to rage punch whoever had snuck up on me and simply look in that direction instead.
"Ye… Jessica?" I recognised the girl who had spoken my name. She looked different from back at Winslow, having replaced her previous mode of dress with Jeans and and a grey hoodie. Her hair was also back in a bun behind her head, allowing her brown eyes to stand out more than usual to her pale face.

"Greg." She confirmed. "I haven't seen you since the…"
"Yeah…" I answered, not wanting to mention it to her. I was fine with what happened, strangely enough, but I knew a lot of people weren't. I didn't know where she stood on it.
The silence between us dragged out until Jessica cleared out her throat with a cough.

"Blood on your shoes." She blurted aloud, gesturing towards them. I looked down but I couldn't see anything but the dim stains on my pantleg that I had reduced to the point that it kind of looked like mud.
"There is also little splatter," She continued. "Which means you stepped in it after it was on the floor. There are only a few places in the Bay where you can find that and you didn't go to a butcher shop."
"What are you-"
"You're here to find the circles aren't you?"
My mind stopped.
"How did you?"
"Know?" She finished for me, getting visibly excited as she kept speaking. "I guess I'm just good at observing things. But your shoes say that you've already been to one of them so what happened?"

I felt my eye twitch as I remembered the Hellfire.

"That bad huh?" Jessica asked. "Well. I'm not surprised. These people are more violent than over seventy percent of cults in history. The fact that you had to use violence to…" She stopped as though she was listening to something. I strained my ears to listen too but I couldn't hear anything past the nearby crime-scene.
"You didn't deal with them. You found them already dealt with." She stated with a shocked expression.
"Never mind that, how are you finding these… people?" I said, eager to change the subject from explaining the arson.
Jessica looked to see if anyone was watching and, after seeing that no looking at us, reached into her pocket and pulled out what looked like a child between a calculator and a radar.
"This is a scanner that can detect Energy not conserved by the laws of entropy. I used it to find this place but the PRT got here before I could."

"Woah." I breathed out in amazement. If anything could find some metaphysical demon force then it was that thing. Part of me was sceptical that it worked on all things demon but it got her here though.
So good enough maybe?

"What were you planning to do when you found them?" I asked her, curious as I couldn't see any obvious weapons on her.
Unless she gained powers or something.
"I… was going to call the PRT." She said sheepishly for some reason.
"I guess its convenient that you didn't have to."
"That's not the point!"
"What is the point?" I asked legitimately curious.
"I… Never mind." She answered vaguely. I was about to press her about it before she suddenly asked me a question that I had been dreading.

"So how did you find these places?"
She built something that found Hell energy, something that probably required time and effort. How did I tell her that I had found these Sacraficial sites through a thread on PHO that complained about a bunch of these places, including the place we were at, with minimal effort on my part.
"Oh, you know… Just research."

"Research? Really?" She asked with a face that told me she wasn't buying what I was selling.

"Yup."

She raised an eyebrow.

"Okay then. Well I have one place to check out? Would you like to come along since you were doing that anyway."
"Sure, Let's go" I turn to walk away and I almost shoulder check someone on my way to do so.
"Oh , sorry man." I shout as he turns and waves at me.

Wait… That was the homeless person from earlier.
"Hey! How's your ribs?"
He looks at me with a quizzical look.
"Ribs…" he almost whispers before getting a look of realisation. "Oh, yes. Those are fine!"
"Okay. Have a good day!" I shout as Jessica directs me down the street, pulling on my arm as she did so.
"You as well!"

As I walk down the street I rub my left hand, checking for any possible damage from that fireball earlier.
Because as I touched that homeless man, it almost felt like warm steel.
…
Magic, am I right?

The DOOM of Earth Bet [DOOM/Worm]

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Inq. Halbread

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