Sakuya's Butler
A refined Butler to a knife wielding Mistress.
- Location
- ↓, ↘, → + Punch
If it's like Doom2016.....
Studying hell energies will result in the BFG9000.
Which is NEVER a bad thing.
The DOOM of Earth Bet [DOOM/Worm]
- Thread starter Inq. Halbread
- Start date
- Crossover
Studying hell energies will result in the BFG9000.
Which is NEVER a bad thing.
Inq. Halbread
Angry Physicist Robot
- Location
- Somewhere where there is no. (South Africa)
I like the idea of the power being a cross between Alfred and Batman's detective skills.
Also your guess was pretty close.
Her shard's name is Observer if that helps.
Please put away my notes...
Sakuya's Butler
A refined Butler to a knife wielding Mistress.
- Location
- ↓, ↘, → + Punch
Your notes?
I thought these were from Bethesda Games since I got them at PAX.
I thought these were from Bethesda Games since I got them at PAX.
Inq. Halbread
Angry Physicist Robot
- Location
- Somewhere where there is no. (South Africa)
Nooooooooo....
*puts away suspiciously familiar folder*
Totally original idea.
Sakuya's Butler
A refined Butler to a knife wielding Mistress.
- Location
- ↓, ↘, → + Punch
Just.....don't use the Hellshot.
*facepalms at just how BAD that gun was*
At least the Reaper isn't too bad.
Inq. Halbread
Angry Physicist Robot
- Location
- Somewhere where there is no. (South Africa)
Don't worry. I just dont think the BFG could really be in this story without SCIENCE!!
A lot of guns probably wont appear.
2.1, The Lord of Hell: The Coming Storm
Inq. Halbread
Angry Physicist Robot
- Location
- Somewhere where there is no. (South Africa)
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.
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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…
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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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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…
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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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Well worth the wait I'd say. Keep it up with the good stuff b0ss!
Pls more chapters I have DooM addiction.
Pls more chapters I have DooM addiction.
Downstreamer
The Architect
- Location
- The Manifold
Ooooooo Greg's quest continues and a mysterious knight of demon slaying appears. Interesting......
Inq. Halbread
Angry Physicist Robot
- Location
- Somewhere where there is no. (South Africa)
Thanks for the responses to the chapter.
I would also like to encourage any comments towards the chapters or what happens in them. I would like to hear all your thoughts and discussion is encouraged as I am doing this to sharpen my writing skills.
...
...
Wow, that was preachy of me.
I would also like to encourage any comments towards the chapters or what happens in them. I would like to hear all your thoughts and discussion is encouraged as I am doing this to sharpen my writing skills.
...
...
Wow, that was preachy of me.
My only real problem with this chapter is that I thought Greg's parents' attitude was much too playful, considering hundreds of kids died and Greg stopped it by carving up demons and cultists. But on that note, I'm really liking your Greg and his power inducing rage issues, I listen to Rip & Tear every time he gets into a confrontation. We've seen Greg's thoughts on this demon buisiness, so will we be seeing more from the other major characters?
Inq. Halbread
Angry Physicist Robot
- Location
- Somewhere where there is no. (South Africa)
Thanks! You will see more major characters and minor ones will appear again.
Their reaction is meant to feel off as this is a small hint that they are actually used to danger and terrible things.
It would be later revealed that his parents are actually High-level E88, not getting involved in the groundwork stuff but the shady business side where people commit suicide from the back of the head and black-book accounting.
And then Greg was a Zombie.
2.2, The Hand that Burns
Inq. Halbread
Angry Physicist Robot
- Location
- Somewhere where there is no. (South Africa)
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...
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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.
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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?
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?
They're like ants. No one wants ant.
Inq. Halbread
Angry Physicist Robot
- Location
- Somewhere where there is no. (South Africa)
Now that I'm less tired let me give you guys an AN
AN: As you guys can see, I'm back. The work load hasn't decreased and Ive accidentally got stuck into Total War Warhammer, XCOM2 and quantum Physics (The first two are the enjoyable ones).
So, I've been building this chapter for more than a month due to constant interruptions and revisions on what was going to happen this chapter.
I hope you all enjoyed it and I hope to write more, either a little less slowly or when my work dies down.
AN: As you guys can see, I'm back. The work load hasn't decreased and Ive accidentally got stuck into Total War Warhammer, XCOM2 and quantum Physics (The first two are the enjoyable ones).
So, I've been building this chapter for more than a month due to constant interruptions and revisions on what was going to happen this chapter.
I hope you all enjoyed it and I hope to write more, either a little less slowly or when my work dies down.
Sakuya's Butler
A refined Butler to a knife wielding Mistress.
- Location
- ↓, ↘, → + Punch
You almost, ALMOST, feel pity for Lucy. Mostly because it comes across that she was made unwillingly, however much she enjoys life now.
Almosy.
Almosy.
Inq. Halbread
Angry Physicist Robot
- Location
- Somewhere where there is no. (South Africa)
If there is one theme in Worm, its that no one is born evil.
...but they can get very, very evil.
Future Snapshot: Halloween
Inq. Halbread
Angry Physicist Robot
- Location
- Somewhere where there is no. (South Africa)
So, there is no new chapter but I decided to give you guys a small Halloween look into the future.
There is an in-universe Halloween chapter planned (from Greg's POV) but this is a small teaser on the scope that I have planned for this story.
Hope you enjoy!
Also, I would like to nip the taylor questions in the bud.
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31 October 2011
Despite all that had happened to Brockton Bay in the past few months, I was just so amazed at how... Normal the city was.
Arguably more normal than it had been last Halloween.
I sighed as I looked around the street I was on, my temporary servants giving me a better idea of my surroundings than normal eyes. All around the street were large apartment buildings, low income housing for people who worked closer to the Bay's centre.
Was it weird that I had barely even seen places like this? Even with my career as a supervillain?
I guess I was just so used to the Docks or the suburbs where Dad and I lived but I doubt anyone would have expected the streets to look like this...
Last year, this street would have been empty this halloween as kids were kept in their homes, their parents too scared to let their kids roam with the constant threat of the gangs at the time.
Now... Now the street was full of children, clothed in a variety of colourful costumes as they went door to door.
Maybe it was just me, but I had no idea how everyone acted so normally. After Leviathan? After the S9?
After all the Demons?
I let out another sigh, a passing five year old with a parental escort quickly glancing in my direction before running off to another building, The bank incident had left me a lot more introspective.
It wasn't everyday that a shirtless, angry blond boy tried to disembowl you with a giant spider leg.
"Hey Taylor! Look what we got!" I turned my head to see a young, redheaded girl run up to me dressed as some sort of pink princess and carrying two containers of sweets.
"Hey Courtney, Where's Aisha?" I asked Aisha's friend as she arrived, looking for the sight of a similar costume somwhere behind her. I had no idea why Aisha had decided to dress in the exact same poofy, pink dress as her friend but both of them had dragged me out of the base to be their "minder", as Alec called it, while Brian wasn't looking.
"Oh, She's right here!" Courtney yelled throwing her arms out to the sides, almost spilling the candy.
Her shadow... didn't, instead it waved in my general direction.
Ah.
That explains why Aisha wore a dress, why I couldn't find her with my servants and why Lisa was cackling madly while she helped Aisha get ready.
Should have been obvious really.
Why couldn't things just be normal in the life of Taylor Hebert for once?
I was just about to admonish the two for essentially cheating when an extremely engine noise assaulted all of our ears as it sped past, thankfully not hitting any of the numerous kids just crossing the street.
Half a second later, that noise was also followed by another, mixed in with the sound.
While my normal eyes weren't fast enough to look, my servant Reginald, a former scarab beetle, managed to see the whole thing.
Pinging him for information, I was treated to the sight of a lteral monster truck made out of bone racing down the street with what seemed to be a dozen skeletons ontop, throwing bones and axes made out of bone at their pursuers.
Their pursuers was a rather normal car, even if it was traveling at incredibly hihg speeds. The only odd thing about it was the figure in heavy blue armour, leaning out of the passenger window and firing at the skeletruck with what looked like a heavy machine gun. That car was followed by two heavily armoured PRT APCs, lagging slightly behind.
I took a moment to think before I put my hand on Courtney's shadow, and hopefully my shadow's hand on Aisha's and started pushing them to another house.
"Yes, great haul girls. Lets quickly find another place to get candy." I said as I pushed my young charges down the street, in the opposite direction from the chase.
Because if there was one thing I knew, it was that Greg was probably enjoying his halloween.
And shit broke whenever that maniac enjoyed something.
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Happy (Belated) Halloween!
There is an in-universe Halloween chapter planned (from Greg's POV) but this is a small teaser on the scope that I have planned for this story.
Hope you enjoy!
Also, I would like to nip the taylor questions in the bud.
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31 October 2011
Despite all that had happened to Brockton Bay in the past few months, I was just so amazed at how... Normal the city was.
Arguably more normal than it had been last Halloween.
I sighed as I looked around the street I was on, my temporary servants giving me a better idea of my surroundings than normal eyes. All around the street were large apartment buildings, low income housing for people who worked closer to the Bay's centre.
Was it weird that I had barely even seen places like this? Even with my career as a supervillain?
I guess I was just so used to the Docks or the suburbs where Dad and I lived but I doubt anyone would have expected the streets to look like this...
Last year, this street would have been empty this halloween as kids were kept in their homes, their parents too scared to let their kids roam with the constant threat of the gangs at the time.
Now... Now the street was full of children, clothed in a variety of colourful costumes as they went door to door.
Maybe it was just me, but I had no idea how everyone acted so normally. After Leviathan? After the S9?
After all the Demons?
I let out another sigh, a passing five year old with a parental escort quickly glancing in my direction before running off to another building, The bank incident had left me a lot more introspective.
It wasn't everyday that a shirtless, angry blond boy tried to disembowl you with a giant spider leg.
"Hey Taylor! Look what we got!" I turned my head to see a young, redheaded girl run up to me dressed as some sort of pink princess and carrying two containers of sweets.
"Hey Courtney, Where's Aisha?" I asked Aisha's friend as she arrived, looking for the sight of a similar costume somwhere behind her. I had no idea why Aisha had decided to dress in the exact same poofy, pink dress as her friend but both of them had dragged me out of the base to be their "minder", as Alec called it, while Brian wasn't looking.
"Oh, She's right here!" Courtney yelled throwing her arms out to the sides, almost spilling the candy.
Her shadow... didn't, instead it waved in my general direction.
Ah.
That explains why Aisha wore a dress, why I couldn't find her with my servants and why Lisa was cackling madly while she helped Aisha get ready.
Should have been obvious really.
Why couldn't things just be normal in the life of Taylor Hebert for once?
I was just about to admonish the two for essentially cheating when an extremely engine noise assaulted all of our ears as it sped past, thankfully not hitting any of the numerous kids just crossing the street.
Half a second later, that noise was also followed by another, mixed in with the sound.
While my normal eyes weren't fast enough to look, my servant Reginald, a former scarab beetle, managed to see the whole thing.
Pinging him for information, I was treated to the sight of a lteral monster truck made out of bone racing down the street with what seemed to be a dozen skeletons ontop, throwing bones and axes made out of bone at their pursuers.
Their pursuers was a rather normal car, even if it was traveling at incredibly hihg speeds. The only odd thing about it was the figure in heavy blue armour, leaning out of the passenger window and firing at the skeletruck with what looked like a heavy machine gun. That car was followed by two heavily armoured PRT APCs, lagging slightly behind.
I took a moment to think before I put my hand on Courtney's shadow, and hopefully my shadow's hand on Aisha's and started pushing them to another house.
"Yes, great haul girls. Lets quickly find another place to get candy." I said as I pushed my young charges down the street, in the opposite direction from the chase.
Because if there was one thing I knew, it was that Greg was probably enjoying his halloween.
And shit broke whenever that maniac enjoyed something.
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Happy (Belated) Halloween!
April Fools Day: In which everything gets resolved Poorly.
Inq. Halbread
Angry Physicist Robot
- Location
- Somewhere where there is no. (South Africa)
Indeterminate time of walking later:
Jessica liked Greg. A lot. Despite the fact that he was as ripped as hell now after his unexplained character development. It also helped that she was slated to be the significant female character with good character development.
Taylor could go suck a beetle.
"Stupid protagonists." she murmerd in abject Jealosy. OCs like her never recieved any recognition from the larger community.
"what?" Stud!Greg asked as his super hearing barely heard her.
"Nothing!" she yelled back, her thoughts filling with appropriate character development.
Suddenly, there were demons on the street. From the sky also fell DEMON SAURON, the DAMON LORD, who had a tragic backstory whose hints were ignored by everyone in favor of Greg's stellar development.
"WHO YOU?!" Rage!Greg yelled, the story demanding that the relatively chilled dude suddenly became a rage monster.
Instantly, Jessica used BS HAX observation power to find out DEMON SAURON's secret Identity.
"ITS YOU!" She screamed, shocked by the revelation that went unexplained to the readers.
"YES! I AM ME!" DEMON SAURON laughed as his character suddenly became isometric from bland 2D.
"NOOOO!" Greg yelled as he charged DEMON SAURON
"GREG! YOU HAV NO WEPON" Jessica screamed at him.
Suddenly, Greg pulled out the shotgun that the writer had forgotten about.
"HAHA" DEMON SAURON laughed as the Writer hadn't forgotten that the shotgun had no ammo.
Undeterred, Greg grabbed his character development as a weapon, using its 2D nature as a monomolecular edge.
"NOOOO!" DEMON SAURON cried as he fled, leaving his demons to get paper cut by weaponised backstory.
Suddenly DR SAMEUL HAYDEN appeared from a portal, telefragging DEMON SAURON.
"WE MUST HARVEST ARGENT ENERGY, REGARDLESS OF DEAD PEOPLE!" He yelled rightueously.
He suddenly disappeared, leaving Earth Bet safe from Demons.
Until two weeks later at least.
DA ENNNNNNNND!
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AN: People seem to think my other Worm Story is pure Crack and too silly,
I have dismissed these claims.
Happy April fools everyone!
And yes, I am currently writing both Knights and Doom of Earth Bet's next updates.
Jessica liked Greg. A lot. Despite the fact that he was as ripped as hell now after his unexplained character development. It also helped that she was slated to be the significant female character with good character development.
Taylor could go suck a beetle.
"Stupid protagonists." she murmerd in abject Jealosy. OCs like her never recieved any recognition from the larger community.
"what?" Stud!Greg asked as his super hearing barely heard her.
"Nothing!" she yelled back, her thoughts filling with appropriate character development.
Suddenly, there were demons on the street. From the sky also fell DEMON SAURON, the DAMON LORD, who had a tragic backstory whose hints were ignored by everyone in favor of Greg's stellar development.
"WHO YOU?!" Rage!Greg yelled, the story demanding that the relatively chilled dude suddenly became a rage monster.
Instantly, Jessica used BS HAX observation power to find out DEMON SAURON's secret Identity.
"ITS YOU!" She screamed, shocked by the revelation that went unexplained to the readers.
"YES! I AM ME!" DEMON SAURON laughed as his character suddenly became isometric from bland 2D.
"NOOOO!" Greg yelled as he charged DEMON SAURON
"GREG! YOU HAV NO WEPON" Jessica screamed at him.
Suddenly, Greg pulled out the shotgun that the writer had forgotten about.
"HAHA" DEMON SAURON laughed as the Writer hadn't forgotten that the shotgun had no ammo.
Undeterred, Greg grabbed his character development as a weapon, using its 2D nature as a monomolecular edge.
"NOOOO!" DEMON SAURON cried as he fled, leaving his demons to get paper cut by weaponised backstory.
Suddenly DR SAMEUL HAYDEN appeared from a portal, telefragging DEMON SAURON.
"WE MUST HARVEST ARGENT ENERGY, REGARDLESS OF DEAD PEOPLE!" He yelled rightueously.
He suddenly disappeared, leaving Earth Bet safe from Demons.
Until two weeks later at least.
DA ENNNNNNNND!
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AN: People seem to think my other Worm Story is pure Crack and too silly,
I have dismissed these claims.
Happy April fools everyone!
And yes, I am currently writing both Knights and Doom of Earth Bet's next updates.
- Location
- A Strange Aeon
And then Greg was a zombie.
Inq. Halbread
Angry Physicist Robot
- Location
- Somewhere where there is no. (South Africa)
Its just a bit of April Fools crack
Later Continues in: Doom of Earth Bet: Repercussions of Evil
2.3 A Brush with Death
Inq. Halbread
Angry Physicist Robot
- Location
- Somewhere where there is no. (South Africa)
It will be surprising to a lot of you, but my mom actually reads what I write and enjoys it immensely.
When I asked her what she wanted for Mothers Day, she asked me to continue this (when I was already doing it so I made sure this is what she wanted).
She said yes, so I put on the afterburners and finished up this chapter for you guys (but mostly her to be honest. Priorities, you know.)
Happy Mother's Day!
============================================
Jessica really couldn't believe her luck.
She really really couldn't. She had thought that today was going to be like any other, and now she was heading to what was no doubt another crazy cult and she was going there with Greg Fucking Veder.
She had no idea if her luck was pretty good, or especially bad today.
Today had started exactly as she had planned. Wake up, breakfast, morning coffee, get ready for the day and finally experiment with her power. That had been her schedule for the past two weeks and, even after all that time, there was still so much to find out.
Jessica knew that wasn't normal.
After researching her power, the way that it would observe what she directed it at and then tell her the results, she knew that she was definitely a Thinker, and probably one of the most powerful at that. Days of searching Parahumans Online, a site she had little interest in before her trigger, for any descriptions of how Thinkers used their abilities and liberal use of her power while reading any posts where Thinkers talked about their abilities gave her enough information to make a very important conclusion.
Thinker powers were either vague or had terrible drawbacks to them, neither of which seemed to describe Jessica's power. From Gallant, the local ward who could see emotions but only as colours, to Accord, the Bostonian villain who could make a plan to accomplish anything thst he thought of but he had crippling OCD in return. Jessica's power didn't act like that. It actually told her things, in terms that she could understand. It made suggestions and gave her conclusions based on what she was doing at the time. At first it terrified her when she really thought about it. Her powers actually talked to her and she had been worried that it wasn't her powers at all, but instead being mastered by some sort of analytical Cape. But as the days went one, she just realised that her powers were just that good. Too good compared to almost everyone else's power. It felt like her power was the cheat version of every thinker's hard-won abilities. Other thinkers seemed to need to work alongside her abilities, her powers worked with her. She didn't even have a need to go out and use her powers for fighting like every other Parahuman seemed too. Instead, in return for the power to Observe anything she wanted, she had one urge to fulfil.
Investigate what happened at Winslow. All of it.
It had freaked her out when her power had come out and told her exactly what it wanted her to do, what it was subconsciously urging her to do. However, she couldn't deny that, even without powers, she would want to know that too.
In this case, the difference between her with and without powers was merely the abilities to get answers.
And what answers they were!
It hadn't taken her and her power long to definitively prove out that the Demons, as Greg Veder of all people had named them, weren't some sort of parahuman creation like the news had claimed. The evidence for that, lay in the energy that they used.
Using her power, It had been all too easy to get back into the ruins of Winslow and find pieces of the Demons that had been killed that day. When the body was in enough pieces, it was inevitable that an overworked forensic team would miss quite a few of them. She guessed she should probably thank Greg for dismembering so many Demons, as morose as that sounds.
From those assorted, gruesome pieces, she had found the secret that laid with in each demon. It was a type of energy, that much was certain but it barely registered on any attempt to actually record it. It was as though the energy was on a different type of reality from her own…
…
Which kind of made sense considering the giant portal thing she had almost been fed to.
She had been a little grateful when her power had informed her that it was preventing her from feeling trauma from that little episode. She had seen some of her old friends after Winslow and she never wanted to become a nervous wreck like they were.
After finding out the Demon Energy was from a different dimension entirely, it hadn't taken much to build a detector to find any more of that energy.
That is what had led her to the cults.
The thought of them brought a shiver down her spine. She shouldn't have been surprised to find that a city as violent as Brockton Bay had even more violently insane people but when she had first stumbled onto her first cult of the day, she could do nothing but stare, feeling like her shaking legs were going to collapse out from underneath her, as people in deceptively normal clothes sacrificed crying men, women and even a few that looked barely into their teens.
It was a cold comfort to know that her power couldn't stop her from feeling everything.
After she managed to keep her legs still for a moment, she did the only thing a reasonable person could do when faced with an arcane mass killing.
Call the PRT.
Within two minutes, armoured PRT vans had arrived and black armoured troops had raided the entire cult, arrested them and freed the, now extremely relieved captives. Her power told her from her hiding place that they were part of a new division of PRT troops dedicated to preventing another Event like Winslow, considering everyone still thought the Demons were the minions of some new villain.
So, she obliged them, and called them for the next six cults she had found.
And then at her most recent incident of 'teenager rats out murderous psychos to cops', she found Greg Veder of all people, looking like he had just waded through a slaughter house in a red and black jacket with a shirt depicting some Aleph anime and bloodspattered jeans and running shoes, staring almost obliviously as the PRT arrested the latest Cult leader that had found. The fact that her power told her that none of that same blood was his didn't help much.
Then, she had an idea and, before she could think her plan through, the scariest person she knew was now walking side by side with her as they went to the next place with Demon Energy. Her original plan had simply been to get Greg, the guy who had saved her before and pretty much single handedly killing the lunatics at Winslow, to do it again. Thankfully, from the barely noticeable bulge under his jacket, he had brought a shotgun.
Unfortunately, this threw up her anxiety by another five points at least.
She knew Greg from before the whole Demon thing. He had been a nerd with almost no social skills that used to be the collective chew toy of both the popular kids and the football team. Jessica was had been in the year after Greg, and she had seen him gain the reputation of "that weird nerdy freshman kid".
To past Jessica, Greg had merely been a reference that the girls around her used when trying to prove that the bullies that they wanted to date were 'manly' enough for them. She just couldn't reconcile the images of that Greg with the blond teen that had ripped apart almost a hundred demons that day.
Was this what it was like to see a Carrie? One day, someone just Triggers, gets super powers and goes on to cause death and destruction on a ludicrous scale? No longer was Greg the boy that would keep to his small circle of friends and would have normally been too nervous to talk to her, if the way he spoke to that Herbert girl was any indication. No, now he was walking next to her on the side walk, filled with a sort of inner confidence that her power had helpfully attributed to apathy. It was almost like he didn't notice that she was a girl anymore.
Just like it was easy to forget that, upon some reflection, the boy next to her had a larger body count than some serial killers.
"So…" Greg began next to her, staring intently at the beeping Energy sensor in her hand as though trying to see all of it at once, "What is that?"
Her logical part of her brain instantly called her stupid when she heard that question and her breath immediately hitched. All of Jessica's anxiety about being next to an adolescent killing machine and the nervousness about her power came to the forefront of her mind, overpowering that small logical voice inside of her head with incoherent sounds of panic. She hadn't told anyone about her power. Her parents were distant enough from her that they barely noticed what she was doing in the basement, little alone whether she was okay after the Incident or not. What could she say to him? The thing in her hand was hardly something you could buy at a surplus store…
Thankfully, her experience in the cutthroat nature of high school politics allowed her to instinctively disguise her internal panic with a thoughtful expression, as though she was pondering what to say. Unfortunately, you couldn't ponder like that forever.
Energy Detector was built using publicly available scientific principles. Apathetic mannerisms have persisted in Greg's question with minor variation. Limited information should satisfy Greg's curiosity. Jessica's power cut through her mental panic
Could that even work? She thought back.
The device in your hand does not have the traits commonly associated with 'Tinkertech'. It has proven many times in human history that the fabrication of an inflated intelligence to the point of incomprehension is an efficient one.
Yeah, until they start to ask reasonable questions at least. She shot back.
Data indicates that such occurrences are rare.
"It's a…" Jessica began, completely trusting her power, despite her personal doubts. "…Detector for the energy the Demons use."
She felt her anxiety spike as she waited for a response. Was he going to suddenly become violent at the mention of Demons? Did he suspect her about having powers?
It seemed like forever until Greg nodded at her answer.
"I guess that makes sense." Greg continued. "Demons normally come from Hell and somehow eat souls or things like that. It makes sense that they would have Demon magic-"
"Magic?" Jessica interrupted, her power's voice echoing her own. "What are you talking about?"
Greg raised an eyebrow.
"It's always some sort of magic. You know, like in DmC? D&D? Quake?" Greg's expression got more and more frustrated at her confused expression.
Was I supposed to understand any of that?
Unclear.
Greg sighed as he seemed to be deep in thought.
"Diablo?" He tried again. "Doom? Almost any supernatural game?"
Diablo? Wait… Was he…?
"Are these video games you are talking about?"
Greg looked relieved as he gave her a nod.
"Greg. I don't think these 'Demons' work like they do in video games." Jessica's tone remaining incredulous. She had played video games before, especially when she was younger, but nothing like whatever Greg had been referring to.
She didn't really like fantasy games.
"Come on. Of course, they do!" Greg insisted. "Summoning rituals, Cultists, Fireballs. There is no way that it isn't because of some sort of magic."
Jessica frowned, the part of her that had made her a reasonably popular girl was telling her that arguing with him wasn't going to get her anywhere.
But…
"All of that doesn't need magic to do." She retorted, her dislike of fantasy fiction brewing under the surface. "Cults happen all the time from people having weird ideas. Even that Fallen group is some sort of Endbringer cult of all things. And, a fireball doesn't need magic to be made either. Plenty of parahumans can do it, even Lung does it occasionaly."
"And Capes are no way essentially magic nonsense?" Greg replied with an incredulous look.
"Okay. Bad example." She admitted. "But there is still ways to do it without resorting to saying some stupid words and waving your hands."
Greg gave her an odd look.
Greg's expression indicates suspicion and incredulity. Likely your bias against fantasy settings has been on display and has reduced your relationship value.
"Magic isn't as stupid at that." Greg gave out a huff. "Most magic systems require intense study, or being part of some ancient bloodline, or having a genetic defect or something."
"Although…" Greg rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "That last one I mentioned was actually from that Aleph game, Dragon Age and it doesn't really count because Demons there are actually sentient pieces of emotion and not…"
All Jessica could do was stare as Greg fell into several long rants and explanations about why Dragon Age's magic system somehow did and didn't count as actual magic. She had honestly expected some sort of catty remark or snide insult when her power had told her that she had offended Greg, not him falling into a vocal debate with him playing both sides of the argument. Was this how it felt to talk to a nerd?
Previous observation and conclusion seems… incorrect.
You could say that again…
Previous obser-
Please don't.
It didn't take long for Greg to seemingly run out of steam, eventually just walking alongside Jessica with a thoughtful expression on his face. Now if only she could keep quiet long enough for-
"Magic is still dumb though," Jessica blurted out. "The idea that you could break the law of physics with a few words and handwaving is too unbelievable."
Goddammit Brain…
Greg sighed.
"You really don't like fantasy…" It was a statement. "What do you prefer then?"
"Sci-fi." Jessica proudly stated, her brain's latent anxiety unable to catch up with her mouth. "I grew up on Starcraft and Star Trek as a kid."
While the small socially conditioned part of Jessica was being mortified, Greg rolled his eyes.
"So you prefer an organism that can flick his fingers and change reality, just because, but can't stand dudes who study really hard to do the same thing."
"Hey," Jessica humphed. "I never said I like Q's ability to just destroy all reason or logic. I like him because he is funny. Besides, other Sci-fi doesn't have magic."
"Oh yes, because the Psionic powers the Overmind had to literally resurrect Cerebrates, through the POWER OF THE MIND, is clearly following the law of Energy Conservation."
And so the discussion continued as they walked to where the detector was pointing them, Jessica finding it easier and easier to ignore that voice in her head trying to remind her that it would be smart to be scared of a guy like Greg.
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Christian Mortimer stared at the place where his coffee table used to be.
Instead of the mahogany and glass table, the table where his Dad used to rest his feet from the seat of a nearby couch and the table that he had kissed his wife on, there rested a scene from a horror film.
In the centre of the living room lay a glowing symbol that vaguely looked like a pentagram. That in itself wasn't the horrific part.
No, the horrific part was the fact the dozens of people who had been killed ontop of it.
As Christian watched the cloaked men and women around him chant as they dragged another crying victim to the center of the symbol, he thought back to how it had all gone wrong.
It had all begun in a hospital, on the day that his father had been almost eviscerated by a gang of ABB.
The family had fallen on hard times, trying to pay for the expensive surgeries and doctors that had made sure that his dad had kept on living. A mere month from that accident, his mother had been killed working as a Sales representative in a building that one of Purity of the E88's beams had collapsed. It had turned out that it was an accident as well, having been a missed shot against Glory Girl of that New Wave hero group.
They had apologised, but that was a cold comfort to the Mortimer family who had lost the most caring mother that they could have ever wished for.
Immediately, the patriarch of the family had fallen into a deep depression and, four months later, Christian's father had commited suicide by ganger, purposely attacking a group of E88 thugs in the night leaving Christian and his sister as the last members of their family in the bay.
That was three years ago. Three years of sadness and trying to ger by on what income a teenager/young adult could get to support a sixteen year old girl.
That had been his life until three weeks ago. He had been so busy he had failed to notice his sister join the Merchant's as a drug pusher to try and help with the salary issues. The first that he had heard of it was when he had been called as her emergency contact, just as she was dying from an infection from a crossbow bolt that had been shot through her shoulder.
Christian had been shattered, his family was gone, chewed up by the shittness of the Bay and leaving him with no friends, no family, no one to care if he joined them.
He had almost done so, until he had met Jack Wells.
The Charismatic man had asked him why he was willing to throw away his life when the Bay was so close to salvation? Why would he do such a thing if he could see his family again?
Like that, he had him. The idea that he could make everything right, that everything could go back to just having a happy family… It made him think that he would do anything to get them back.
Until today that is.
He had a bad feeling when a truck had pulled up to his front lawn that morning and a young teen, introducing himself as Alex, had gotten out of the truck and opened the back with a few familiar members of the Cult.
He had been shocked into speechlessnsess when they had started pulling at least a dozen bound and gagged people from the back of the truck.
It was all he could do but watch as the sudden visitors in his home had overturned his lounge, drew some odd symbols with knives in the floor and walls and then begun killing their captives on top of them, somehow getting them to glow a sickly red.
This wasn't what he wanted. Jack had gave him the job of a recruiter, pitching the idea of the cult to people and helping them see the truth that Jack had shown him. But no matter what his very soul was screaming at him about the sheer wrongness of the ritual slaughter, he couldn't bring himself to stop it.
Jack was right. Everyone in Earth Bet was already damned, no matter who you were. With more and more parahumans running around, heroes and villians, the innocent people in the middle were going to die or get corrupted by whatever made the parahumans in the first place, his family being the prime example for Christian.
A small part of him was okay with the killings from that point of view. It was better to die for a good purpose rather than slaughtered thoughtlessly by one of those caped monsters.
So all he could do was stand there as the final sacrifice, a young homeless woman crying into the rag stuffed into her mouth, was about to be stabbed by that kid Alex, who was raising his knife while saying words that Christian had no hope of getting his mouth to even repeat, little alone understand.
The young woman let out a muffled screen has Alex, whose knife had been raised high above the kneeling captive, began to bring it down.
And then he immediately froze, as a large bang sounded from the house's back door.
"What was that?!" Another cultist asked, newbie looking around nervously as the eyes on his teenaged face threatened to pop out of his skull.
Alex's eyes immediately widened.
"Oh fuck…" Alex breathed out, his horrified blood splattered face confusing Christian. Suddenly, Alex bent down, made some quick adjustments to the symbol below him with his knife and sprinted towards the corridor leading to the front door.
"What the hell are you doing!?" One of the old members of the cult yelled after the retreating teen, his wrinkeled face sporting a confused but angry frown.
Alex didn't reply, only turning around briefly and gesturing to the confused captive before continuing his sprint out the front door.
Suddenly, with a cry of pain, the young woman's neck exploded, throwing what looked like boiling blood all around her as the circle took on a bright red glow, almost blinding compared to what it had looked like earlier.
Then, as the captive's corpse hit the glowing circle and disintegrated, the kitchen door, just towards the back of the lounge opposite from the front of the house, slammed open. Christian was shocked to see that the person standing in the door was only a young, blonde teenage boy, a red and black jacket framing a shirt with some sort of cartoon on it along with blood-spattered jeans and running shoes.
The look of fury on the boy's face in the light of the glowing symbols had such an intensity that it shocked the half a dozen cultists in the living room.
"Wha-" That was all the kid's closest to the doorway managed to say before the intruder raised his shotgun to the head and fired. With a massive boom, the adolescent cultist's blood joined that of the sacrifices' on his clothes as the shotgun reduced his head to mush. The gruesome death managed to get blood on his killer's face, the blood emphasising the eyes as it reflected the sinister light of the sacrificial circle as though they were glowing themselves.
By the time the dead kid's body was falling to the ground, his dirty 9mm pistol flying from his pocket at the sheer force, the rest of the Lord's Faithfull managed to get their wits about them.
Unfortunately, even that was far too late.
Christian watched as the blond killer ran towards another one of the cultists, a twenty-two-year-old former dockworker named Johnny in bloodsplattered overalls, his fist reared back for a punch. Christian expected the killer to act like anyone would, stop and carefully aim the fist for maximum effect.
He didn't.
The boy's speed was shocking, his fist colliding with Johnny's face before he could react to the sudden charge. The sound of splintering bone and snapping tendon ran through the air as Johnny's face snapped back from the sheer force of the fist, his neck snapping back further than it could go and blood exploading from the man's shattered jaw.
Fear filled Christian as the blond killer didn't slow down, charging to the cultist behind Johnny, A middle-aged former E88 member who Christian had recruited last week, and launching his fist at the man's midsection. With the sound of rending flesh and broken ribs, the killer's fist burrowed into the man's chest with the force of the punch.
What the fuck? Was the summary of the fear filled thoughts that ran through Christian's mind. How the hell did he do this? Was this kid a parahuman?
With a jolt of realisation, he realised that the boy who had just killed three people nearly effortlessly had to be a parahuman. Punches couldn't snap necks or eviscerate people after all.
So as the parahuman set about pulling his fist from the dying man's ribcage, Christian felt a rage overcome him. In front of him was the one of the things that had caused all his misery, one of the creatures that his cult was dedicated to destroying. Looking around, he could see the two remaining cultists felt the same way, if their faces were any indication.
With a snarl, Christian felt his fear bleed away as he reached into his pocket and drew the revolver that he had tucked away there that morning. It used to belong to his father before he died and it was one of the keepsakes that Christian had kept with him to remind himself of why he was doing this.
It was only fitting that he would take revenge with his father's prized possession and, as the beast's fist finally came free of his victim's chest, Christian aimed and fired.
The gun's aim was true and a bullet slammed into the beast's shoulder, releasing a spray of blood out of the newly made whole in its jacket as the arm holding the gun spasmed from the wound. It's blazing eyes turned towards him, pure fury written on the deceptively human face. With a furious yell, the other two cultists charged the beast, wielding their sacrificial knives with furious grips as Christian was about to fire again.
Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be.
Quicker than Christian could see, the beast raised its shotgun in his direction and fired it one handed.
It was all Christian could do to scream as he felt the pellets rip through his torso, dropping the revolver from his nerveless hand. As he collapsed against the wall behind him, it felt as though everything was in slow motion.
The aged cultist yelled as he came close to the beast, stabbing his knife forward with all his weight. The beast caught the man's arm, stopping it completely as it dropped its shotgun and snapping the man's bone from its grip alone. The knife fell from the limp hand as its owner was then punched in the head with a sickening snap. The beast then grabbed the falling knife out of the air with a bit of a fumble and, faster than Christian could see, stabbed it into the neck of the other cultist, a woman who had been saved from slavery at an ABB brothel just four months prior.
But Christian's attention wasn't on the death of his two acquaintances.
As Christian slowly slid to the floor while the Beast started killing the other cultists, the sacrificial circle brightened and pulsed. Then, in a flash of red light that forced Christian's broken body to shudder, a… Monster appeared.
It was almost humanoid. It looked like an immensely large man with odd feet and only four digits on each hand. Its grey skin covered its extremely large muscles and its face looked like some sort of eyeless skull draped tightly with skin. It was huge and towered everyone there.
Christian watched it notice the beast just as the poor cultist woman started to cough blood though the new hole in her throat, and it Roared.
Almost like a flash, the monster had charged the Beast and punched forward with a flaming fist. The Beast braced itself, hoping to take the punch.
It didn't.
As the Monster hit the Beast's chest, Christian heard the Beast's ribcage collapse as it was lifted off its feet, the force of the punch launching back into the kitchen.
Christian's feeling of grim satisfaction lasted only until the Monster looked towards him and snarled. With a sense of dread, Christian watched as the monster took a few massive steps towards him and raised its foot above his head.
With a choked scream, Christian felt his head be crushed into paste under the monster's clawed foot.
Then he woke up to a burning sky.
=============================================
Coughing up blood wasn't an activity I had any experience with,
Then again, neither was getting my ribcage crushed by a demon's fist but I digress.
As I tried to take another breath, I hacked as even more blood left my punctured lungs. The feeling of my ribs poking through my lungs was extremely unpleasant.
Despite my seemingly mortal wounds, my rage hadn't decreased at all since I found the cultists around their sacrificial circle, their latest victim's body disintegrating into the glowing symbol carved into the house's living room floor. With the rage I already felt by just being near demon stuff, it had been the straw to break the camel's back and I felt my rage turn murderous.
I had killed all the cultists in that room, and I don't regret a single thing about that. The circle erupting into a bright light of a Demon teleport made me regret not coming sooner and interrupting the whole thing before it finished.
I regretted it even more when the Hell Knight had crushed my chest in one blow. As I knelt on the floor, hacking up blood on the kitchen floor, I puzzled over just how it did that. Hell Knights had punched me before and none of them had hurt me this badly. Was it because the ones at school were lesser ones and this was a stronger variant? Were they levelled demons and I was beating level tens but this one is a level thirty or something? Or was it something to do with the fact that it was the only demon there?
I am on my hands and knees on the tiled floor of the kitchen, puking my literal guts out. Why isn't it trying to finish me off?
A soft scream and crunch answered that. I really couldn't feel sorry for the unfortunate cultist but I knew that it really sucked to be teamkilled as well. The sound of the cultist dying reminded me that I didn't have time to sit here with a collapsed chest cavity. Thankfully, I could feel my ribs slowly moving out of my lungs and back into what I felt was the proper position for them, I couldn't tell really as feeling ones ribs wasn't really an everyday activity.
I also just noticed that I get very sarcastic when I am in great pain. Good to know such relevant information.
I looked towards the towering demon, eyeing its slow approach from the edge of the living room of the house, enjoying my suffering before it likely was planning to kill me. I mentally cursed. I couldn't fight like this and, despite my paradoxically calm rage, my chest was healing far too slowly for it to finish before the Hell Knight decided to take this seriously.
"Dammit." I breathe out, thankful that my lungs could suddenly inflate as the last bit of my ribs left them but rather put out by the fact that none of my ribs were back to being unbroken. The demon was only a few steps away now and I had nothing else to help me against it, having thoughtlessly dropped my shotgun in the living room earlier.
Not that it would do much, considering I had used both shots in the thing.
I couldn't even ask Jessica for help. When we had arrived to this place, we had actually found ourselves behind the house through sheer circumstance. Having the real life equivalent to regenerating health, I had suggested going in the back door while she waited outside. That meant that, as long as the Demon and I were inside, she couldn't do anything about it. Not that I would want her to, of course. It didn't look like she actually had a gun on her and, knowing just how tough I was to a normal person, I couldn't help but think that she would just get one-shotted by the Hell Knight if she did fight it. Kind of like if a zergling tried to bite a deployed siege tank.
I figured, for someone whose first game was apparently Starcraft, she would appreciate the analogy even if she would yell at me for fighting a demon like this alone. She just felt like that kind of person.
My thoughts paused as a massive shadow fell over me, the Hell Knight's impressive height blocking out the light from the fluorescent bulbs above. I could tell that the Hell Knight was doing its best to smile as it slowly raised its arms in the air, its hands joined together in a combined fist. It thought I was helpless from the pain and false fear on my expression. It was almost right, I was near helpless.
But not for long and I wasn't scared of it, all I needed to do was to time it right.
I was only Angry.
As it brought its fists down at a blinding speed, I pushed off with both my arms, my enhanced anger strength more than enough to throw me clear from the demons attack and further into the cramped kitchen, neatly between the kitchen sink, filled with all manner of dirty dishes, and the large fridge opposite it. I landed on my back, watching as the Knight's fists sunk into the tiled floor, spreading a spiderweb of cracks around the area of impact.
It turned to look at me, rage clear in the tightening of its jaw and low rumbling growl from its throat. As the last pain from my chest faded along with a click of refusing ribs, I gave the Demon a bloodthirsty smile.
And then I let go.
As though by Instinct, I smacked my fists on the floor with my fists, the force of the impact obeying Newton's third law and coming back into me, lifting me up high enough for me to stand.
Any other time, I would have been gushing about how cool that move was, and how I needed to keep practicing it to Anime levels of polish. Now, I could only feel my need to Kill this thing. To Rip it apart with my bare HANDS!
I launched myself at the Demon, my speed just being enough to shatter its notions of me being pathetic as I striked my fist against its jaw. It staggered upright, recovering from my attack quickly and launching a quick fist of its own towards my torso.
Instead of being an idiot and trying to tank a bodybuilding demon, I dodged to the side fast enough to miss it entirely. Then I punched it in the chest.
Again. And Again. And Again.
My fists were faster than they ever had been as I metted out my rage-filled combo. A couple of punches and a dodge of quick retaliatory strike was an easy routine to fit into. Each of my punches shifted the Hell Knight slightly, meaning that its inevitable punch or kick was a lot easier to dodge. However, despite my strength, I was doing little to it. But it was a little damage over a long time vs no damage at all and odds like that won boss fights.
Plus, I don't think it is called cheesing if you do it in real life.
Unfortunately, the Hell Knight was not a video game character. I felt myself lose my balance as the Hell Knight used its forearm to block my latest punch and pushed back against it, forcing my fist away from me and forcing myself to stumble.
Then, I felt my neck erupt in pain as the Knight's right hand closed around it in a steel like grip and lifted me bodily from the floor. It raised its left hand into a fist, glowing with energy, likely going to try and cave my skull in with a massive strike to my face.
I didn't let that happen.
Almost as soon as my feet left the ground, my fists started lashing out, landing blow after blow on the demon's head. I saw its head snap back slightly after each punch, spewing demon blood from its jaw slightly denting the skull and adding more bruises and cuts that now littered the demon's body.
With a roar of pain and rage, it threw me to the opposite side of the room and I let out a grunt of pain as my back struck a kitchen counter, splintering the wood as I crashed trough the cupboard doors on the bottom part.
I could feel a mild pain down my spine but it wasn't crippling so I quickly scrambled to my feet again, ending up right next to the fridge. The Demon charged so I did the most sensible thing possible and slammed the fridge door in its face.
It broke immediately, not built to withstand a charging Hell Knight or a near super human teen using it as a bludgeon, but it got the job done as the Demon yelled in pain after colliding with the steel door, reeling back and clutching its head.
I didn't stop. Wielding the broken door in my hands, I raised it and brought it down on the demon again and again with a yell of rage, the sound of bones cracking as it impacted the demon's blocking forearms, even as I drove it to the ground. Then I almost lost my balance when the demon grabbed the door, tugging it out of my grip and ripping it in two with a snarl.
I recovered instantly and reached over to the other side, towards the sink. The Hell Knight growled as I started launching dirty plates and glasses at it, the flying ceramic and glass doing nothing to it. That was fine, I was looking for something else. Just as my hand closed around the handle of a dirty steak knife, I had to quickly move away from the Knight's falling fist as it tried to decapitate me. I watched as the Demon's fist barely missed my head and collided with the sink, crumpling the metal around it's impact and destroying the remaining plates and glasses in that sink.
Having found what I was looking for, I didn't care and simply turned around and stabbed the bloody steak knife into the Hell Knight's chest. The meat was tough, but my strike had enough force to overcome it and a spurt of demon blood was released as the knife sunk into its shoulder.
It yelled in pain and it took a step back, glaring me all the way.
I tried to pull my knife back, it didn't move. I tried again and it only moved slightly.
My eyes widened as I realised that it was stuck there, and I was just standing there trying to pull it out.
In a fight that relied on me trying to dodge every attack, it was suicide.
Then the left part of my face exploded in pain as I went flying from a quick backhand by the Hell Knight.
Right into the kitchen window.
Comparably, the pain of breaking through the reinforced glass that most people in Brockton Bay had in their windows was significantly less that what felt to be a dislocated jaw and a nearly cracked left temple.
Landing on the grass in the back yard of the house felt like a pillow compared to those two.
As I lay there, I felt…sleepy but thankfully I was still very angry and my desire to KILL that PATHETIC SLAVE WARRIOR was enough to keep me awake.
"Holy shit! Are you okay!?" I heard Jessica in the distance, but I ignored it. I had to focus on Killing now.
As I struggled to my knees, I felt the side of my head. I gasped as pain erupted when my hand touched my temple but less than just a second ago. I had read somewhere that you fell unconscious if someone hit you there hard enough.
That meant that I'd be off balance for a while at least.
As I stumbled to my feet, a slight feeling of nausea breaking through the constant rage I felt and I knew that I was unfortunately correct.
I turned my head groggily as the house's back door was broken down by a single kick from the irate Hell Knight.
I prepared myself as the Hell Knight stalked directly towards me at a brisk pace. The fight had certainly taken its toll on it as I could see all the cuts, bruises and knife sticking out of its shoulder. It wasn't enough, this wasn't going to end until I KILLED it. I stayed where I was, trying to clear my head.
Zeeeeeeiiiii. Bing
What is that? My mind absently thought. It sounded like something being charged.
Fiitch
My eyes widened as I saw a bright flash of light lance from somewhere behind me and strike the Hell Knight in the chest, staggering it. When the light cleared from my vision, I saw a sizeable hole in the Demon's torso, as though something had punched right through it.
My head spun around and I saw Jessica, her backpack had been lain on the ground, open and some sort of thing that looked like a jury rigged space rifle was in her hands.
Honestly, it looked more like a wireframe than anything else. It looked like a piece of metal customised to be some sort of stock. Coils exposed to the open air surrounded where the barrel for the rifle was supposed to go while on the end closest to her was some sort of cube box that looked like it came from sort of those brand new miniature radios that they were selling at the Boardwalk. It also looked like the sides of the radio had been stripped away and the whole thing was connected to the coils on the barrel. As Jessica placed a sharpened piece of metal in the middle of the barrel, past the coils, I could barely spot a flickering red light in that box.
As soon as the sharpened spike had been placed, she aimed at the Hell Knight again, her face a mixture of determination and being scared shitless I think while her gun made the same odd charging noise.
The whole process had only taken a second and a half and the Knight barely had enough time to roar in defiance when she fired again, imbedding another spike into the demon's chest with a flash of light. This time, the Hell Knight doubled over in pain, its breathing laboured, trying to recover from the shots.
It was at that moment that gun sparked and started fizzing out.
I cursed, I couldn't rely on this thankful Deus Ex Machina to finish it off.
But that was fine, I wanted to kill it anyway.
With a yell of anger, I ran up to the demon and grabbed the knife in it's shoulder.
I braced my foot against the demon and used it to pull out the knife, the bloodied instrument coming free with a pained grunt from the Knight. Then I grabbed its lower jaw with my offhand, pulling it as open as I could.
Then I stabbed the knife through the roof in its mouth.
It stood there for a second, its blood leaking down my arm from its fatal wound, and then it collapsed lifelessly.
In an instant, my rage disappeared, and I too collapsed, almost as lifelessly.
I don't know how long I lay there, exhausted and staring off into the darkening sky above me, next to the dead Hell Knight.
Eventually I saw Jessica stand above me.
"You Idiot!" She yelled at me, concern clear on her face. "Why didn't you say that there was a Grey Demon there?"
"Didn't know." I simply answered, too tired for longer responses. "Found Cultists at first. Knight came later."
"What happened to the cultists?"
"Dead." I don't know why, but I saw her wince at my answer.
"Then why didn't you lead the grey out here so we could work together?"
"Didn't know that you had some sort of Super crossbow."
She remained silent at that, and I took the opportunity to close my eyes.
=====================================
Eventually, Jessica and I had to eventually talk about the cleanup of this whole mess.
Because apparently, even if they were cultists who were actually trying to bring about Hell on Earth, again, I had technically committed mass murder. I was significantly less worried about that than Jessica was, especially after she saw the bodies.
It was definite proof that I was still pretty weird, even compared to survivors of kidnapping, Demon attacks and attempted sacrifice. Although, Jessica seemed to get powers from Winslow, so I guess she shouldn't be really used as a comparison.
Capes are always a bit weird after all.
For awhile, it seemed inevitable that the PRT, who Jessica insisted on calling, were going to notice the immense carnage and determine that someone had come in and killed them all as they summoned 'a dangerous Tinker-made creature last seen in the Winslow attack'.
That was, until I rememberd the Demon indulging in teamkilling that injured cultist. After Jessica confirmed that all their deaths could be interpreted as a fight between the Demon and some unfortunate misses on the part of shotgun wielding cultists, I dragged the Demon back into the house and dumped it into the kitchen and arranged it in such a way that indicated that it had died there.
My plan had even accounted for the fact that a normal person could't really use a fridge door as a weapon through making it look like the Demon did it.
All I had to do was desecrate a cultist corpse with one of the pieces of the door, which I didn't really find to distasteful oddly enough but kept it quick for Jessica's sake, and drop it as though it had been thrown away in frustration. Hopefully, the PRT would think that a Brute Parahuman had helped fight the Hell Knight, which I cemented by forcefully dislocating the dead demon's jaw, and was eventually killed whereupon the survivors bailed, which the broken back door suggested.
With all that done, all I had was a hastily arranged crimescene, my empty shotgun, nauseus girl outside waiting for me to leave and way more blood on me than I used to have.
Meaning I was absolutely drenched in it and I shouldn't be here when the PRT arrived.
So, after leaving the PRT an anonymous tip, Jessica and I left for the bus stop, Hoping, to take the late bus home while Jessica was silently accusing my plan of being bad.
Honestly, I didn't really see the badness. With my blood-splattered red and black jacket I looked like a very active E88 member and Jessica looked like some sort of bystander or even a nervous girlfriend dragged along to illegal things. This normally would have been a problem but as the suburbs were E88 territory, it was a common occurrence from what I had seen. I don't know why I got banned from PHO for pointing that out though.
When we eventually reached the bus stop, I sat down on the completely deserted bench with a sigh.
It had been a long day.
"Thank you." Jessica suddenly spoke up, having been completely silent on the way there. "I couldn't have done this without you and…" she paused.
"No worries." I cut her off. "I came here to do this anyway. If anything, you saved my life today."
Jessica's eyes widened.
"NoNoNo." She quickly denied. "I barely helped. My railgun broke after the second shot. If I had been there alone, I would have died today" Jessica said somberly, her gaze now firmly on the floor with what I saw as a pout on her face.
I nodded. I figured it had to be some sort of railgun. I didn't know how they worked but the one in Quake kind of made the same sounds and the same lightshow.
"Maybe." I replied. "But if you hadn't shot at it, it would have ripped me apart from my head injury. If I had fought it alone, I definitely would have died."
And what a sobering thought that was. I wasn't a proud or even really confident person but I had underestimated that Hell Knight. I had thought that It was like the others I had faced, an annoynce but manageable.
My crushed ribcage told me how dumb I was. I needed to take them more seriously. In gaming terms, Winslow was my tutorial level and I couldn't rely on badass conservation to win.
I needed training.
I sighed. It was going to be a lot of work but if it was going to save my life it would be worth it. I needed to be able to shoot properly, I needed to be able to fight with my fists better because apparently I really liked doing that. I wasn't going to be a whiny shonen protagonist and lose a fight before I started training. No, I was going the RPG route, where a trash mob was way too hard to take down so now its time to power level.
I broke off my thoughts to look at Jessica as she sat next to me. Could she help me get better? We just met but I enjoyed talking to her earlier even if she had some sort of grudge against magic systems.
Seriously, How does someone play Starcraft but not know Diablo though…
I started to say something but stopped as soon as I saw that she had that far away look on her face. I quickly figured out the entire world ceased to exist for her when she did that, even had to drag her back on the sidewalk during our earlier walk.
"Sorry, Am I interrupting something?"
I looked up at whoever was speaking, seeing a familiar beard and ratty clothes standing infront of the bench I was sitting at.
"Hey," I replied, mildly suspicious. "You are that guy from earlier. I thought you lived a few blocks away."
The homeless man smiled.
"No, I was just passing through really. Checking on how things were going and all that. I'm far more interested about you though." He said, eyeing my bloody clothes.
"Yeah, I guess you could say that."
He tutted.
"No need to be modest, Greg. I'm sure that crashing Alex's little party will get that stupid little imp to actually step up now that he has a proper host. Although, I don't particularly blame you though. The warehouse was supposed to be your welcoming present but some fuckers can't read a book properly."
"Wha-" I didn't have a chance for my shocked mind to reply as a large blade of red energy suddenly erupted from above the man's wrist and stabbed it into my stomach area.
I gasped in pain, the burning of my insides preventing me from screaming while Jessica did what I wanted to do, the sudden violence startling her from her trance.
"Getting a suspicious address from a PHO post? I was surprised when you actually took the bait, never believing that the person ruining my plans, years in the making, were ruined by a fucking fifteen year old." The man's voice became deeper, more sinister and… digital as he spoke.
With no effort at all, the man raised his arm blade, raising me into the air as I felt my ribcage start to scorch from the blades touch.
Then the man changed… As though he was some sort of corrupted image, he dissolved into thousands of fading corrupted pixels.
As they faded away, it revealed something that could only come from the depths of hell. It was armour, with the blackest scorched steel I had ever seen, created in such a way that it almost looked organic. The arm holding me aloft was now armoured in a spiked, black gauntlet with some sort of energy projector that generated the blade.
The man in the Hellsuit stared at me, bright red-orange lenses staring into my own eyes.
"My name is Micheal. You have fucked up this world's salvation from crystal worms. Prepare to go to Hell you fuck." He said. A quiet rage filling every word.
============================================
AN: Hey, did you guys know that this story has a TV TROPES PAGE!
I recently found out, and it made my day.
Also, I hope you enjoyed the chapter!
When I asked her what she wanted for Mothers Day, she asked me to continue this (when I was already doing it so I made sure this is what she wanted).
She said yes, so I put on the afterburners and finished up this chapter for you guys (but mostly her to be honest. Priorities, you know.)
Happy Mother's Day!
============================================
Jessica really couldn't believe her luck.
She really really couldn't. She had thought that today was going to be like any other, and now she was heading to what was no doubt another crazy cult and she was going there with Greg Fucking Veder.
She had no idea if her luck was pretty good, or especially bad today.
Today had started exactly as she had planned. Wake up, breakfast, morning coffee, get ready for the day and finally experiment with her power. That had been her schedule for the past two weeks and, even after all that time, there was still so much to find out.
Jessica knew that wasn't normal.
After researching her power, the way that it would observe what she directed it at and then tell her the results, she knew that she was definitely a Thinker, and probably one of the most powerful at that. Days of searching Parahumans Online, a site she had little interest in before her trigger, for any descriptions of how Thinkers used their abilities and liberal use of her power while reading any posts where Thinkers talked about their abilities gave her enough information to make a very important conclusion.
Thinker powers were either vague or had terrible drawbacks to them, neither of which seemed to describe Jessica's power. From Gallant, the local ward who could see emotions but only as colours, to Accord, the Bostonian villain who could make a plan to accomplish anything thst he thought of but he had crippling OCD in return. Jessica's power didn't act like that. It actually told her things, in terms that she could understand. It made suggestions and gave her conclusions based on what she was doing at the time. At first it terrified her when she really thought about it. Her powers actually talked to her and she had been worried that it wasn't her powers at all, but instead being mastered by some sort of analytical Cape. But as the days went one, she just realised that her powers were just that good. Too good compared to almost everyone else's power. It felt like her power was the cheat version of every thinker's hard-won abilities. Other thinkers seemed to need to work alongside her abilities, her powers worked with her. She didn't even have a need to go out and use her powers for fighting like every other Parahuman seemed too. Instead, in return for the power to Observe anything she wanted, she had one urge to fulfil.
Investigate what happened at Winslow. All of it.
It had freaked her out when her power had come out and told her exactly what it wanted her to do, what it was subconsciously urging her to do. However, she couldn't deny that, even without powers, she would want to know that too.
In this case, the difference between her with and without powers was merely the abilities to get answers.
And what answers they were!
It hadn't taken her and her power long to definitively prove out that the Demons, as Greg Veder of all people had named them, weren't some sort of parahuman creation like the news had claimed. The evidence for that, lay in the energy that they used.
Using her power, It had been all too easy to get back into the ruins of Winslow and find pieces of the Demons that had been killed that day. When the body was in enough pieces, it was inevitable that an overworked forensic team would miss quite a few of them. She guessed she should probably thank Greg for dismembering so many Demons, as morose as that sounds.
From those assorted, gruesome pieces, she had found the secret that laid with in each demon. It was a type of energy, that much was certain but it barely registered on any attempt to actually record it. It was as though the energy was on a different type of reality from her own…
…
Which kind of made sense considering the giant portal thing she had almost been fed to.
She had been a little grateful when her power had informed her that it was preventing her from feeling trauma from that little episode. She had seen some of her old friends after Winslow and she never wanted to become a nervous wreck like they were.
After finding out the Demon Energy was from a different dimension entirely, it hadn't taken much to build a detector to find any more of that energy.
That is what had led her to the cults.
The thought of them brought a shiver down her spine. She shouldn't have been surprised to find that a city as violent as Brockton Bay had even more violently insane people but when she had first stumbled onto her first cult of the day, she could do nothing but stare, feeling like her shaking legs were going to collapse out from underneath her, as people in deceptively normal clothes sacrificed crying men, women and even a few that looked barely into their teens.
It was a cold comfort to know that her power couldn't stop her from feeling everything.
After she managed to keep her legs still for a moment, she did the only thing a reasonable person could do when faced with an arcane mass killing.
Call the PRT.
Within two minutes, armoured PRT vans had arrived and black armoured troops had raided the entire cult, arrested them and freed the, now extremely relieved captives. Her power told her from her hiding place that they were part of a new division of PRT troops dedicated to preventing another Event like Winslow, considering everyone still thought the Demons were the minions of some new villain.
So, she obliged them, and called them for the next six cults she had found.
And then at her most recent incident of 'teenager rats out murderous psychos to cops', she found Greg Veder of all people, looking like he had just waded through a slaughter house in a red and black jacket with a shirt depicting some Aleph anime and bloodspattered jeans and running shoes, staring almost obliviously as the PRT arrested the latest Cult leader that had found. The fact that her power told her that none of that same blood was his didn't help much.
Then, she had an idea and, before she could think her plan through, the scariest person she knew was now walking side by side with her as they went to the next place with Demon Energy. Her original plan had simply been to get Greg, the guy who had saved her before and pretty much single handedly killing the lunatics at Winslow, to do it again. Thankfully, from the barely noticeable bulge under his jacket, he had brought a shotgun.
Unfortunately, this threw up her anxiety by another five points at least.
She knew Greg from before the whole Demon thing. He had been a nerd with almost no social skills that used to be the collective chew toy of both the popular kids and the football team. Jessica was had been in the year after Greg, and she had seen him gain the reputation of "that weird nerdy freshman kid".
To past Jessica, Greg had merely been a reference that the girls around her used when trying to prove that the bullies that they wanted to date were 'manly' enough for them. She just couldn't reconcile the images of that Greg with the blond teen that had ripped apart almost a hundred demons that day.
Was this what it was like to see a Carrie? One day, someone just Triggers, gets super powers and goes on to cause death and destruction on a ludicrous scale? No longer was Greg the boy that would keep to his small circle of friends and would have normally been too nervous to talk to her, if the way he spoke to that Herbert girl was any indication. No, now he was walking next to her on the side walk, filled with a sort of inner confidence that her power had helpfully attributed to apathy. It was almost like he didn't notice that she was a girl anymore.
Just like it was easy to forget that, upon some reflection, the boy next to her had a larger body count than some serial killers.
"So…" Greg began next to her, staring intently at the beeping Energy sensor in her hand as though trying to see all of it at once, "What is that?"
Her logical part of her brain instantly called her stupid when she heard that question and her breath immediately hitched. All of Jessica's anxiety about being next to an adolescent killing machine and the nervousness about her power came to the forefront of her mind, overpowering that small logical voice inside of her head with incoherent sounds of panic. She hadn't told anyone about her power. Her parents were distant enough from her that they barely noticed what she was doing in the basement, little alone whether she was okay after the Incident or not. What could she say to him? The thing in her hand was hardly something you could buy at a surplus store…
Thankfully, her experience in the cutthroat nature of high school politics allowed her to instinctively disguise her internal panic with a thoughtful expression, as though she was pondering what to say. Unfortunately, you couldn't ponder like that forever.
Energy Detector was built using publicly available scientific principles. Apathetic mannerisms have persisted in Greg's question with minor variation. Limited information should satisfy Greg's curiosity. Jessica's power cut through her mental panic
Could that even work? She thought back.
The device in your hand does not have the traits commonly associated with 'Tinkertech'. It has proven many times in human history that the fabrication of an inflated intelligence to the point of incomprehension is an efficient one.
Yeah, until they start to ask reasonable questions at least. She shot back.
Data indicates that such occurrences are rare.
"It's a…" Jessica began, completely trusting her power, despite her personal doubts. "…Detector for the energy the Demons use."
She felt her anxiety spike as she waited for a response. Was he going to suddenly become violent at the mention of Demons? Did he suspect her about having powers?
It seemed like forever until Greg nodded at her answer.
"I guess that makes sense." Greg continued. "Demons normally come from Hell and somehow eat souls or things like that. It makes sense that they would have Demon magic-"
"Magic?" Jessica interrupted, her power's voice echoing her own. "What are you talking about?"
Greg raised an eyebrow.
"It's always some sort of magic. You know, like in DmC? D&D? Quake?" Greg's expression got more and more frustrated at her confused expression.
Was I supposed to understand any of that?
Unclear.
Greg sighed as he seemed to be deep in thought.
"Diablo?" He tried again. "Doom? Almost any supernatural game?"
Diablo? Wait… Was he…?
"Are these video games you are talking about?"
Greg looked relieved as he gave her a nod.
"Greg. I don't think these 'Demons' work like they do in video games." Jessica's tone remaining incredulous. She had played video games before, especially when she was younger, but nothing like whatever Greg had been referring to.
She didn't really like fantasy games.
"Come on. Of course, they do!" Greg insisted. "Summoning rituals, Cultists, Fireballs. There is no way that it isn't because of some sort of magic."
Jessica frowned, the part of her that had made her a reasonably popular girl was telling her that arguing with him wasn't going to get her anywhere.
But…
"All of that doesn't need magic to do." She retorted, her dislike of fantasy fiction brewing under the surface. "Cults happen all the time from people having weird ideas. Even that Fallen group is some sort of Endbringer cult of all things. And, a fireball doesn't need magic to be made either. Plenty of parahumans can do it, even Lung does it occasionaly."
"And Capes are no way essentially magic nonsense?" Greg replied with an incredulous look.
"Okay. Bad example." She admitted. "But there is still ways to do it without resorting to saying some stupid words and waving your hands."
Greg gave her an odd look.
Greg's expression indicates suspicion and incredulity. Likely your bias against fantasy settings has been on display and has reduced your relationship value.
"Magic isn't as stupid at that." Greg gave out a huff. "Most magic systems require intense study, or being part of some ancient bloodline, or having a genetic defect or something."
"Although…" Greg rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "That last one I mentioned was actually from that Aleph game, Dragon Age and it doesn't really count because Demons there are actually sentient pieces of emotion and not…"
All Jessica could do was stare as Greg fell into several long rants and explanations about why Dragon Age's magic system somehow did and didn't count as actual magic. She had honestly expected some sort of catty remark or snide insult when her power had told her that she had offended Greg, not him falling into a vocal debate with him playing both sides of the argument. Was this how it felt to talk to a nerd?
Previous observation and conclusion seems… incorrect.
You could say that again…
Previous obser-
Please don't.
It didn't take long for Greg to seemingly run out of steam, eventually just walking alongside Jessica with a thoughtful expression on his face. Now if only she could keep quiet long enough for-
"Magic is still dumb though," Jessica blurted out. "The idea that you could break the law of physics with a few words and handwaving is too unbelievable."
Goddammit Brain…
Greg sighed.
"You really don't like fantasy…" It was a statement. "What do you prefer then?"
"Sci-fi." Jessica proudly stated, her brain's latent anxiety unable to catch up with her mouth. "I grew up on Starcraft and Star Trek as a kid."
While the small socially conditioned part of Jessica was being mortified, Greg rolled his eyes.
"So you prefer an organism that can flick his fingers and change reality, just because, but can't stand dudes who study really hard to do the same thing."
"Hey," Jessica humphed. "I never said I like Q's ability to just destroy all reason or logic. I like him because he is funny. Besides, other Sci-fi doesn't have magic."
"Oh yes, because the Psionic powers the Overmind had to literally resurrect Cerebrates, through the POWER OF THE MIND, is clearly following the law of Energy Conservation."
And so the discussion continued as they walked to where the detector was pointing them, Jessica finding it easier and easier to ignore that voice in her head trying to remind her that it would be smart to be scared of a guy like Greg.
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Christian Mortimer stared at the place where his coffee table used to be.
Instead of the mahogany and glass table, the table where his Dad used to rest his feet from the seat of a nearby couch and the table that he had kissed his wife on, there rested a scene from a horror film.
In the centre of the living room lay a glowing symbol that vaguely looked like a pentagram. That in itself wasn't the horrific part.
No, the horrific part was the fact the dozens of people who had been killed ontop of it.
As Christian watched the cloaked men and women around him chant as they dragged another crying victim to the center of the symbol, he thought back to how it had all gone wrong.
It had all begun in a hospital, on the day that his father had been almost eviscerated by a gang of ABB.
The family had fallen on hard times, trying to pay for the expensive surgeries and doctors that had made sure that his dad had kept on living. A mere month from that accident, his mother had been killed working as a Sales representative in a building that one of Purity of the E88's beams had collapsed. It had turned out that it was an accident as well, having been a missed shot against Glory Girl of that New Wave hero group.
They had apologised, but that was a cold comfort to the Mortimer family who had lost the most caring mother that they could have ever wished for.
Immediately, the patriarch of the family had fallen into a deep depression and, four months later, Christian's father had commited suicide by ganger, purposely attacking a group of E88 thugs in the night leaving Christian and his sister as the last members of their family in the bay.
That was three years ago. Three years of sadness and trying to ger by on what income a teenager/young adult could get to support a sixteen year old girl.
That had been his life until three weeks ago. He had been so busy he had failed to notice his sister join the Merchant's as a drug pusher to try and help with the salary issues. The first that he had heard of it was when he had been called as her emergency contact, just as she was dying from an infection from a crossbow bolt that had been shot through her shoulder.
Christian had been shattered, his family was gone, chewed up by the shittness of the Bay and leaving him with no friends, no family, no one to care if he joined them.
He had almost done so, until he had met Jack Wells.
The Charismatic man had asked him why he was willing to throw away his life when the Bay was so close to salvation? Why would he do such a thing if he could see his family again?
Like that, he had him. The idea that he could make everything right, that everything could go back to just having a happy family… It made him think that he would do anything to get them back.
Until today that is.
He had a bad feeling when a truck had pulled up to his front lawn that morning and a young teen, introducing himself as Alex, had gotten out of the truck and opened the back with a few familiar members of the Cult.
He had been shocked into speechlessnsess when they had started pulling at least a dozen bound and gagged people from the back of the truck.
It was all he could do but watch as the sudden visitors in his home had overturned his lounge, drew some odd symbols with knives in the floor and walls and then begun killing their captives on top of them, somehow getting them to glow a sickly red.
This wasn't what he wanted. Jack had gave him the job of a recruiter, pitching the idea of the cult to people and helping them see the truth that Jack had shown him. But no matter what his very soul was screaming at him about the sheer wrongness of the ritual slaughter, he couldn't bring himself to stop it.
Jack was right. Everyone in Earth Bet was already damned, no matter who you were. With more and more parahumans running around, heroes and villians, the innocent people in the middle were going to die or get corrupted by whatever made the parahumans in the first place, his family being the prime example for Christian.
A small part of him was okay with the killings from that point of view. It was better to die for a good purpose rather than slaughtered thoughtlessly by one of those caped monsters.
So all he could do was stand there as the final sacrifice, a young homeless woman crying into the rag stuffed into her mouth, was about to be stabbed by that kid Alex, who was raising his knife while saying words that Christian had no hope of getting his mouth to even repeat, little alone understand.
The young woman let out a muffled screen has Alex, whose knife had been raised high above the kneeling captive, began to bring it down.
And then he immediately froze, as a large bang sounded from the house's back door.
"What was that?!" Another cultist asked, newbie looking around nervously as the eyes on his teenaged face threatened to pop out of his skull.
Alex's eyes immediately widened.
"Oh fuck…" Alex breathed out, his horrified blood splattered face confusing Christian. Suddenly, Alex bent down, made some quick adjustments to the symbol below him with his knife and sprinted towards the corridor leading to the front door.
"What the hell are you doing!?" One of the old members of the cult yelled after the retreating teen, his wrinkeled face sporting a confused but angry frown.
Alex didn't reply, only turning around briefly and gesturing to the confused captive before continuing his sprint out the front door.
Suddenly, with a cry of pain, the young woman's neck exploded, throwing what looked like boiling blood all around her as the circle took on a bright red glow, almost blinding compared to what it had looked like earlier.
Then, as the captive's corpse hit the glowing circle and disintegrated, the kitchen door, just towards the back of the lounge opposite from the front of the house, slammed open. Christian was shocked to see that the person standing in the door was only a young, blonde teenage boy, a red and black jacket framing a shirt with some sort of cartoon on it along with blood-spattered jeans and running shoes.
The look of fury on the boy's face in the light of the glowing symbols had such an intensity that it shocked the half a dozen cultists in the living room.
"Wha-" That was all the kid's closest to the doorway managed to say before the intruder raised his shotgun to the head and fired. With a massive boom, the adolescent cultist's blood joined that of the sacrifices' on his clothes as the shotgun reduced his head to mush. The gruesome death managed to get blood on his killer's face, the blood emphasising the eyes as it reflected the sinister light of the sacrificial circle as though they were glowing themselves.
By the time the dead kid's body was falling to the ground, his dirty 9mm pistol flying from his pocket at the sheer force, the rest of the Lord's Faithfull managed to get their wits about them.
Unfortunately, even that was far too late.
Christian watched as the blond killer ran towards another one of the cultists, a twenty-two-year-old former dockworker named Johnny in bloodsplattered overalls, his fist reared back for a punch. Christian expected the killer to act like anyone would, stop and carefully aim the fist for maximum effect.
He didn't.
The boy's speed was shocking, his fist colliding with Johnny's face before he could react to the sudden charge. The sound of splintering bone and snapping tendon ran through the air as Johnny's face snapped back from the sheer force of the fist, his neck snapping back further than it could go and blood exploading from the man's shattered jaw.
Fear filled Christian as the blond killer didn't slow down, charging to the cultist behind Johnny, A middle-aged former E88 member who Christian had recruited last week, and launching his fist at the man's midsection. With the sound of rending flesh and broken ribs, the killer's fist burrowed into the man's chest with the force of the punch.
What the fuck? Was the summary of the fear filled thoughts that ran through Christian's mind. How the hell did he do this? Was this kid a parahuman?
With a jolt of realisation, he realised that the boy who had just killed three people nearly effortlessly had to be a parahuman. Punches couldn't snap necks or eviscerate people after all.
So as the parahuman set about pulling his fist from the dying man's ribcage, Christian felt a rage overcome him. In front of him was the one of the things that had caused all his misery, one of the creatures that his cult was dedicated to destroying. Looking around, he could see the two remaining cultists felt the same way, if their faces were any indication.
With a snarl, Christian felt his fear bleed away as he reached into his pocket and drew the revolver that he had tucked away there that morning. It used to belong to his father before he died and it was one of the keepsakes that Christian had kept with him to remind himself of why he was doing this.
It was only fitting that he would take revenge with his father's prized possession and, as the beast's fist finally came free of his victim's chest, Christian aimed and fired.
The gun's aim was true and a bullet slammed into the beast's shoulder, releasing a spray of blood out of the newly made whole in its jacket as the arm holding the gun spasmed from the wound. It's blazing eyes turned towards him, pure fury written on the deceptively human face. With a furious yell, the other two cultists charged the beast, wielding their sacrificial knives with furious grips as Christian was about to fire again.
Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be.
Quicker than Christian could see, the beast raised its shotgun in his direction and fired it one handed.
It was all Christian could do to scream as he felt the pellets rip through his torso, dropping the revolver from his nerveless hand. As he collapsed against the wall behind him, it felt as though everything was in slow motion.
The aged cultist yelled as he came close to the beast, stabbing his knife forward with all his weight. The beast caught the man's arm, stopping it completely as it dropped its shotgun and snapping the man's bone from its grip alone. The knife fell from the limp hand as its owner was then punched in the head with a sickening snap. The beast then grabbed the falling knife out of the air with a bit of a fumble and, faster than Christian could see, stabbed it into the neck of the other cultist, a woman who had been saved from slavery at an ABB brothel just four months prior.
But Christian's attention wasn't on the death of his two acquaintances.
As Christian slowly slid to the floor while the Beast started killing the other cultists, the sacrificial circle brightened and pulsed. Then, in a flash of red light that forced Christian's broken body to shudder, a… Monster appeared.
It was almost humanoid. It looked like an immensely large man with odd feet and only four digits on each hand. Its grey skin covered its extremely large muscles and its face looked like some sort of eyeless skull draped tightly with skin. It was huge and towered everyone there.
Christian watched it notice the beast just as the poor cultist woman started to cough blood though the new hole in her throat, and it Roared.
Almost like a flash, the monster had charged the Beast and punched forward with a flaming fist. The Beast braced itself, hoping to take the punch.
It didn't.
As the Monster hit the Beast's chest, Christian heard the Beast's ribcage collapse as it was lifted off its feet, the force of the punch launching back into the kitchen.
Christian's feeling of grim satisfaction lasted only until the Monster looked towards him and snarled. With a sense of dread, Christian watched as the monster took a few massive steps towards him and raised its foot above his head.
With a choked scream, Christian felt his head be crushed into paste under the monster's clawed foot.
Then he woke up to a burning sky.
=============================================
Coughing up blood wasn't an activity I had any experience with,
Then again, neither was getting my ribcage crushed by a demon's fist but I digress.
As I tried to take another breath, I hacked as even more blood left my punctured lungs. The feeling of my ribs poking through my lungs was extremely unpleasant.
Despite my seemingly mortal wounds, my rage hadn't decreased at all since I found the cultists around their sacrificial circle, their latest victim's body disintegrating into the glowing symbol carved into the house's living room floor. With the rage I already felt by just being near demon stuff, it had been the straw to break the camel's back and I felt my rage turn murderous.
I had killed all the cultists in that room, and I don't regret a single thing about that. The circle erupting into a bright light of a Demon teleport made me regret not coming sooner and interrupting the whole thing before it finished.
I regretted it even more when the Hell Knight had crushed my chest in one blow. As I knelt on the floor, hacking up blood on the kitchen floor, I puzzled over just how it did that. Hell Knights had punched me before and none of them had hurt me this badly. Was it because the ones at school were lesser ones and this was a stronger variant? Were they levelled demons and I was beating level tens but this one is a level thirty or something? Or was it something to do with the fact that it was the only demon there?
I am on my hands and knees on the tiled floor of the kitchen, puking my literal guts out. Why isn't it trying to finish me off?
A soft scream and crunch answered that. I really couldn't feel sorry for the unfortunate cultist but I knew that it really sucked to be teamkilled as well. The sound of the cultist dying reminded me that I didn't have time to sit here with a collapsed chest cavity. Thankfully, I could feel my ribs slowly moving out of my lungs and back into what I felt was the proper position for them, I couldn't tell really as feeling ones ribs wasn't really an everyday activity.
I also just noticed that I get very sarcastic when I am in great pain. Good to know such relevant information.
I looked towards the towering demon, eyeing its slow approach from the edge of the living room of the house, enjoying my suffering before it likely was planning to kill me. I mentally cursed. I couldn't fight like this and, despite my paradoxically calm rage, my chest was healing far too slowly for it to finish before the Hell Knight decided to take this seriously.
"Dammit." I breathe out, thankful that my lungs could suddenly inflate as the last bit of my ribs left them but rather put out by the fact that none of my ribs were back to being unbroken. The demon was only a few steps away now and I had nothing else to help me against it, having thoughtlessly dropped my shotgun in the living room earlier.
Not that it would do much, considering I had used both shots in the thing.
I couldn't even ask Jessica for help. When we had arrived to this place, we had actually found ourselves behind the house through sheer circumstance. Having the real life equivalent to regenerating health, I had suggested going in the back door while she waited outside. That meant that, as long as the Demon and I were inside, she couldn't do anything about it. Not that I would want her to, of course. It didn't look like she actually had a gun on her and, knowing just how tough I was to a normal person, I couldn't help but think that she would just get one-shotted by the Hell Knight if she did fight it. Kind of like if a zergling tried to bite a deployed siege tank.
I figured, for someone whose first game was apparently Starcraft, she would appreciate the analogy even if she would yell at me for fighting a demon like this alone. She just felt like that kind of person.
My thoughts paused as a massive shadow fell over me, the Hell Knight's impressive height blocking out the light from the fluorescent bulbs above. I could tell that the Hell Knight was doing its best to smile as it slowly raised its arms in the air, its hands joined together in a combined fist. It thought I was helpless from the pain and false fear on my expression. It was almost right, I was near helpless.
But not for long and I wasn't scared of it, all I needed to do was to time it right.
I was only Angry.
As it brought its fists down at a blinding speed, I pushed off with both my arms, my enhanced anger strength more than enough to throw me clear from the demons attack and further into the cramped kitchen, neatly between the kitchen sink, filled with all manner of dirty dishes, and the large fridge opposite it. I landed on my back, watching as the Knight's fists sunk into the tiled floor, spreading a spiderweb of cracks around the area of impact.
It turned to look at me, rage clear in the tightening of its jaw and low rumbling growl from its throat. As the last pain from my chest faded along with a click of refusing ribs, I gave the Demon a bloodthirsty smile.
And then I let go.
As though by Instinct, I smacked my fists on the floor with my fists, the force of the impact obeying Newton's third law and coming back into me, lifting me up high enough for me to stand.
Any other time, I would have been gushing about how cool that move was, and how I needed to keep practicing it to Anime levels of polish. Now, I could only feel my need to Kill this thing. To Rip it apart with my bare HANDS!
I launched myself at the Demon, my speed just being enough to shatter its notions of me being pathetic as I striked my fist against its jaw. It staggered upright, recovering from my attack quickly and launching a quick fist of its own towards my torso.
Instead of being an idiot and trying to tank a bodybuilding demon, I dodged to the side fast enough to miss it entirely. Then I punched it in the chest.
Again. And Again. And Again.
My fists were faster than they ever had been as I metted out my rage-filled combo. A couple of punches and a dodge of quick retaliatory strike was an easy routine to fit into. Each of my punches shifted the Hell Knight slightly, meaning that its inevitable punch or kick was a lot easier to dodge. However, despite my strength, I was doing little to it. But it was a little damage over a long time vs no damage at all and odds like that won boss fights.
Plus, I don't think it is called cheesing if you do it in real life.
Unfortunately, the Hell Knight was not a video game character. I felt myself lose my balance as the Hell Knight used its forearm to block my latest punch and pushed back against it, forcing my fist away from me and forcing myself to stumble.
Then, I felt my neck erupt in pain as the Knight's right hand closed around it in a steel like grip and lifted me bodily from the floor. It raised its left hand into a fist, glowing with energy, likely going to try and cave my skull in with a massive strike to my face.
I didn't let that happen.
Almost as soon as my feet left the ground, my fists started lashing out, landing blow after blow on the demon's head. I saw its head snap back slightly after each punch, spewing demon blood from its jaw slightly denting the skull and adding more bruises and cuts that now littered the demon's body.
With a roar of pain and rage, it threw me to the opposite side of the room and I let out a grunt of pain as my back struck a kitchen counter, splintering the wood as I crashed trough the cupboard doors on the bottom part.
I could feel a mild pain down my spine but it wasn't crippling so I quickly scrambled to my feet again, ending up right next to the fridge. The Demon charged so I did the most sensible thing possible and slammed the fridge door in its face.
It broke immediately, not built to withstand a charging Hell Knight or a near super human teen using it as a bludgeon, but it got the job done as the Demon yelled in pain after colliding with the steel door, reeling back and clutching its head.
I didn't stop. Wielding the broken door in my hands, I raised it and brought it down on the demon again and again with a yell of rage, the sound of bones cracking as it impacted the demon's blocking forearms, even as I drove it to the ground. Then I almost lost my balance when the demon grabbed the door, tugging it out of my grip and ripping it in two with a snarl.
I recovered instantly and reached over to the other side, towards the sink. The Hell Knight growled as I started launching dirty plates and glasses at it, the flying ceramic and glass doing nothing to it. That was fine, I was looking for something else. Just as my hand closed around the handle of a dirty steak knife, I had to quickly move away from the Knight's falling fist as it tried to decapitate me. I watched as the Demon's fist barely missed my head and collided with the sink, crumpling the metal around it's impact and destroying the remaining plates and glasses in that sink.
Having found what I was looking for, I didn't care and simply turned around and stabbed the bloody steak knife into the Hell Knight's chest. The meat was tough, but my strike had enough force to overcome it and a spurt of demon blood was released as the knife sunk into its shoulder.
It yelled in pain and it took a step back, glaring me all the way.
I tried to pull my knife back, it didn't move. I tried again and it only moved slightly.
My eyes widened as I realised that it was stuck there, and I was just standing there trying to pull it out.
In a fight that relied on me trying to dodge every attack, it was suicide.
Then the left part of my face exploded in pain as I went flying from a quick backhand by the Hell Knight.
Right into the kitchen window.
Comparably, the pain of breaking through the reinforced glass that most people in Brockton Bay had in their windows was significantly less that what felt to be a dislocated jaw and a nearly cracked left temple.
Landing on the grass in the back yard of the house felt like a pillow compared to those two.
As I lay there, I felt…sleepy but thankfully I was still very angry and my desire to KILL that PATHETIC SLAVE WARRIOR was enough to keep me awake.
"Holy shit! Are you okay!?" I heard Jessica in the distance, but I ignored it. I had to focus on Killing now.
As I struggled to my knees, I felt the side of my head. I gasped as pain erupted when my hand touched my temple but less than just a second ago. I had read somewhere that you fell unconscious if someone hit you there hard enough.
That meant that I'd be off balance for a while at least.
As I stumbled to my feet, a slight feeling of nausea breaking through the constant rage I felt and I knew that I was unfortunately correct.
I turned my head groggily as the house's back door was broken down by a single kick from the irate Hell Knight.
I prepared myself as the Hell Knight stalked directly towards me at a brisk pace. The fight had certainly taken its toll on it as I could see all the cuts, bruises and knife sticking out of its shoulder. It wasn't enough, this wasn't going to end until I KILLED it. I stayed where I was, trying to clear my head.
Zeeeeeeiiiii. Bing
What is that? My mind absently thought. It sounded like something being charged.
Fiitch
My eyes widened as I saw a bright flash of light lance from somewhere behind me and strike the Hell Knight in the chest, staggering it. When the light cleared from my vision, I saw a sizeable hole in the Demon's torso, as though something had punched right through it.
My head spun around and I saw Jessica, her backpack had been lain on the ground, open and some sort of thing that looked like a jury rigged space rifle was in her hands.
Honestly, it looked more like a wireframe than anything else. It looked like a piece of metal customised to be some sort of stock. Coils exposed to the open air surrounded where the barrel for the rifle was supposed to go while on the end closest to her was some sort of cube box that looked like it came from sort of those brand new miniature radios that they were selling at the Boardwalk. It also looked like the sides of the radio had been stripped away and the whole thing was connected to the coils on the barrel. As Jessica placed a sharpened piece of metal in the middle of the barrel, past the coils, I could barely spot a flickering red light in that box.
As soon as the sharpened spike had been placed, she aimed at the Hell Knight again, her face a mixture of determination and being scared shitless I think while her gun made the same odd charging noise.
The whole process had only taken a second and a half and the Knight barely had enough time to roar in defiance when she fired again, imbedding another spike into the demon's chest with a flash of light. This time, the Hell Knight doubled over in pain, its breathing laboured, trying to recover from the shots.
It was at that moment that gun sparked and started fizzing out.
I cursed, I couldn't rely on this thankful Deus Ex Machina to finish it off.
But that was fine, I wanted to kill it anyway.
With a yell of anger, I ran up to the demon and grabbed the knife in it's shoulder.
I braced my foot against the demon and used it to pull out the knife, the bloodied instrument coming free with a pained grunt from the Knight. Then I grabbed its lower jaw with my offhand, pulling it as open as I could.
Then I stabbed the knife through the roof in its mouth.
It stood there for a second, its blood leaking down my arm from its fatal wound, and then it collapsed lifelessly.
In an instant, my rage disappeared, and I too collapsed, almost as lifelessly.
I don't know how long I lay there, exhausted and staring off into the darkening sky above me, next to the dead Hell Knight.
Eventually I saw Jessica stand above me.
"You Idiot!" She yelled at me, concern clear on her face. "Why didn't you say that there was a Grey Demon there?"
"Didn't know." I simply answered, too tired for longer responses. "Found Cultists at first. Knight came later."
"What happened to the cultists?"
"Dead." I don't know why, but I saw her wince at my answer.
"Then why didn't you lead the grey out here so we could work together?"
"Didn't know that you had some sort of Super crossbow."
She remained silent at that, and I took the opportunity to close my eyes.
=====================================
Eventually, Jessica and I had to eventually talk about the cleanup of this whole mess.
Because apparently, even if they were cultists who were actually trying to bring about Hell on Earth, again, I had technically committed mass murder. I was significantly less worried about that than Jessica was, especially after she saw the bodies.
It was definite proof that I was still pretty weird, even compared to survivors of kidnapping, Demon attacks and attempted sacrifice. Although, Jessica seemed to get powers from Winslow, so I guess she shouldn't be really used as a comparison.
Capes are always a bit weird after all.
For awhile, it seemed inevitable that the PRT, who Jessica insisted on calling, were going to notice the immense carnage and determine that someone had come in and killed them all as they summoned 'a dangerous Tinker-made creature last seen in the Winslow attack'.
That was, until I rememberd the Demon indulging in teamkilling that injured cultist. After Jessica confirmed that all their deaths could be interpreted as a fight between the Demon and some unfortunate misses on the part of shotgun wielding cultists, I dragged the Demon back into the house and dumped it into the kitchen and arranged it in such a way that indicated that it had died there.
My plan had even accounted for the fact that a normal person could't really use a fridge door as a weapon through making it look like the Demon did it.
All I had to do was desecrate a cultist corpse with one of the pieces of the door, which I didn't really find to distasteful oddly enough but kept it quick for Jessica's sake, and drop it as though it had been thrown away in frustration. Hopefully, the PRT would think that a Brute Parahuman had helped fight the Hell Knight, which I cemented by forcefully dislocating the dead demon's jaw, and was eventually killed whereupon the survivors bailed, which the broken back door suggested.
With all that done, all I had was a hastily arranged crimescene, my empty shotgun, nauseus girl outside waiting for me to leave and way more blood on me than I used to have.
Meaning I was absolutely drenched in it and I shouldn't be here when the PRT arrived.
So, after leaving the PRT an anonymous tip, Jessica and I left for the bus stop, Hoping, to take the late bus home while Jessica was silently accusing my plan of being bad.
Honestly, I didn't really see the badness. With my blood-splattered red and black jacket I looked like a very active E88 member and Jessica looked like some sort of bystander or even a nervous girlfriend dragged along to illegal things. This normally would have been a problem but as the suburbs were E88 territory, it was a common occurrence from what I had seen. I don't know why I got banned from PHO for pointing that out though.
When we eventually reached the bus stop, I sat down on the completely deserted bench with a sigh.
It had been a long day.
"Thank you." Jessica suddenly spoke up, having been completely silent on the way there. "I couldn't have done this without you and…" she paused.
"No worries." I cut her off. "I came here to do this anyway. If anything, you saved my life today."
Jessica's eyes widened.
"NoNoNo." She quickly denied. "I barely helped. My railgun broke after the second shot. If I had been there alone, I would have died today" Jessica said somberly, her gaze now firmly on the floor with what I saw as a pout on her face.
I nodded. I figured it had to be some sort of railgun. I didn't know how they worked but the one in Quake kind of made the same sounds and the same lightshow.
"Maybe." I replied. "But if you hadn't shot at it, it would have ripped me apart from my head injury. If I had fought it alone, I definitely would have died."
And what a sobering thought that was. I wasn't a proud or even really confident person but I had underestimated that Hell Knight. I had thought that It was like the others I had faced, an annoynce but manageable.
My crushed ribcage told me how dumb I was. I needed to take them more seriously. In gaming terms, Winslow was my tutorial level and I couldn't rely on badass conservation to win.
I needed training.
I sighed. It was going to be a lot of work but if it was going to save my life it would be worth it. I needed to be able to shoot properly, I needed to be able to fight with my fists better because apparently I really liked doing that. I wasn't going to be a whiny shonen protagonist and lose a fight before I started training. No, I was going the RPG route, where a trash mob was way too hard to take down so now its time to power level.
I broke off my thoughts to look at Jessica as she sat next to me. Could she help me get better? We just met but I enjoyed talking to her earlier even if she had some sort of grudge against magic systems.
Seriously, How does someone play Starcraft but not know Diablo though…
I started to say something but stopped as soon as I saw that she had that far away look on her face. I quickly figured out the entire world ceased to exist for her when she did that, even had to drag her back on the sidewalk during our earlier walk.
"Sorry, Am I interrupting something?"
I looked up at whoever was speaking, seeing a familiar beard and ratty clothes standing infront of the bench I was sitting at.
"Hey," I replied, mildly suspicious. "You are that guy from earlier. I thought you lived a few blocks away."
The homeless man smiled.
"No, I was just passing through really. Checking on how things were going and all that. I'm far more interested about you though." He said, eyeing my bloody clothes.
"Yeah, I guess you could say that."
He tutted.
"No need to be modest, Greg. I'm sure that crashing Alex's little party will get that stupid little imp to actually step up now that he has a proper host. Although, I don't particularly blame you though. The warehouse was supposed to be your welcoming present but some fuckers can't read a book properly."
"Wha-" I didn't have a chance for my shocked mind to reply as a large blade of red energy suddenly erupted from above the man's wrist and stabbed it into my stomach area.
I gasped in pain, the burning of my insides preventing me from screaming while Jessica did what I wanted to do, the sudden violence startling her from her trance.
"Getting a suspicious address from a PHO post? I was surprised when you actually took the bait, never believing that the person ruining my plans, years in the making, were ruined by a fucking fifteen year old." The man's voice became deeper, more sinister and… digital as he spoke.
With no effort at all, the man raised his arm blade, raising me into the air as I felt my ribcage start to scorch from the blades touch.
Then the man changed… As though he was some sort of corrupted image, he dissolved into thousands of fading corrupted pixels.
As they faded away, it revealed something that could only come from the depths of hell. It was armour, with the blackest scorched steel I had ever seen, created in such a way that it almost looked organic. The arm holding me aloft was now armoured in a spiked, black gauntlet with some sort of energy projector that generated the blade.
The man in the Hellsuit stared at me, bright red-orange lenses staring into my own eyes.
"My name is Micheal. You have fucked up this world's salvation from crystal worms. Prepare to go to Hell you fuck." He said. A quiet rage filling every word.
============================================
AN: Hey, did you guys know that this story has a TV TROPES PAGE!
I recently found out, and it made my day.
Also, I hope you enjoyed the chapter!
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2.4 Impaled with Predjudice
Inq. Halbread
Angry Physicist Robot
- Location
- Somewhere where there is no. (South Africa)
I… I didn't feel very good.
I could feel my flesh bubbling around the large energy blade in my gut, in a perpetual state of healing and being cauterized. I could feel the heat in my ribcage of what I imagined a lightsabre to feel like as it continued scorching my bones. I felt nauseas but my stomach had been near evaporated by Michael's blade so all I could do was shudder as I dry-heaved. The rage that I had felt so often when near demonic things felt like it was literally boiling in my blood.
The part of me that had absently watched those medical dramas with my mom was telling me that there was no way that I should even be awake now, little alone struggling on a glowing red energy blade. Every time someone in those shows appears with a pipe or something in them, they are always either dying or close to it. Why was I still awake? Why do I still feel everything?
Why was I so Angry?
"That's odd. I thought you'd be de-" Michael's musings were Interrupted by the sudden introduction of my fist against the front of his helmet. I absently noted the cracking of my finger bones as my fist struck the black steel of the helmet. The armoured head barely moved, my strike slightly turning his head, a smear of red blood prominently displayed on the side of the helmet.
I wasn't in the right mind to care.
"What the-" the armoured man was cut off again as my other fist slammed against his helmet, releasing another sound of crunching bone and a spurt of blood. I felt nothing but pain and rage as my fists rained down on his helmet, slowly but surely covering it in a thin coating of blood from my constantly breaking and regenerating fists, breaking less each time. Through the pain and rage, a simple thought came to me, and my bloodied hands gripped the energy projector and tried to rip it off from the man's vambrace on his right arm, the one that occupied holding me aloft.
"Let go of that!" he yelled, his own unoccupied fist starting its assault on me. I felt his fist slam into my head and chest repeatedly but it wasn't enough for me to stop even as I felt my bones break where what could only be the power armoured fist landed.
Even though it had only been a second, it had felt like forever until the energy blade's projector shifted, breaking hundreds of electrical connections and throwing out noticeably red sparks into the air. The biggest change came about when I felt the blade impaling me suddenly disappear and I fell to the ground, collapsing onto my back.
I lay there, the mists of rage clearing from my mind as I regenerated. It felt weird, feeling my charcoaled flesh suddenly come to life with pain as the nerves slowly regenerated inside the regrowing flesh. It felt even weirder to somehow feel my spine realigning itself as my bones unbroke themselves. I felt every injury as I lay there, the pain dragging seconds into minutes, but, somehow, I felt stronger than I had ever been.
And I felt stronger still with every red spark that emitted from Micheal's broken projector.
As for Micheal himself. I was dimly aware of him simply stare at my wounds for a few seconds until he cursed.
"Of course," he spat, looking up to the sky in what I think was exasperation. "Its just my luck that the one to mess up all my plans had to be a damned hybrid…"
With a sigh, Micheal looked down at me, stretching his neck. I just wanted to lay there but a deep part of me snarled at him, demanding that I stand up and attack him. For the first time, that urge to commit violence, that rage that had burned in me for weeks felt alien in its sheer intensity.
The part of me that was barely thinking, the part that enjoyed his weekends playing a four year old RPG and posting stuff online, couldn't feel anger through all the pain but something else did.
And as I succumbed to it once again, I noticed for the first time and was terrified.
Then I felt rage.
My body spasmed as I tried to lift myself to my feet, trying to move legs that weren't exactly ready to move yet. All I could manage was to sit up as my legs struggled and failed to hold my weight. I felt a scowl form on my face, directed at that expressionless black helmet.
I watched as the man known as Micheal stepped closer to me, staring down at my prone form all the while.
"Stop!" I heard a feminine yell next to me. I turned my head and saw Jessica, standing further away from the both of us, her odd techno gun in her hands with a shaky grip and her opened bag at her feet. "Get away from him!"
My assailant tilted his helmeted head at her, the glowing, blood red visor reflecting off Jessica's scared but determined eyes.
It was odd the things you noticed at a time like this.
"How about, no?" Micheal chuckled. "Or do you really think that your little science project would get through Hell-forged obsidian plate?"
"I'm w-warning you!" Jessica stuttered out. "I don't want to, but I'll kill you if I have to."
I got the vague impression that the demon armoured man took on a thoughtful look.
"You didn't seem to hesitate when it came to Nathan two weeks ago. Did you even know that he had a family when you killed him in that gym hall?" Jessica's face went white but Micheal continued, a definite tone of amusement colouring his voice. "Oh, I've had a long chat with every one of my acolytes who died that day and they were so eager to tell me exactly who was responsible for their failure that day. Poor Nathan was so eager to talk that I didn't even get to using the spikes yet."
Micheal's posture took on a more threatening stance. I felt my vertebrae shift as my nerves solidified into the nerve cord. My legs could move more.
"I know who you are Jessica and everything about you, just as I thought I knew everything to know about Greg here." He gestured towards me. "I suggest you leave, Jessica Winters, unless you want to share the fate of your little demonic friend here."
Micheal turned back towards me and took another step.
"I am literally a Lord in Hell, you have no idea how little you would inconvenience me."
I have no idea what was going on in Jessica's mind at that moment. Had I been my old self, I was slightly ashamed to know that I would have run away, hoping to find someone stronger to help.
I saw a bright beam of light leave Jessica's gun as she fired with her railgun's distinctive roar, too fast for me to see the projectile. The beam was aimed right at the armoured man's head, where it was met by what seemed to be a golden coloured energy shield. Almost instantly, Micheal spun towards Jessica, his left arm extended. A red ball of energy left a projector on his arm and struck Jessica's gun, causing it to explode and shatter in her hands. She screamed as the shards of her gun embedded in her hands and arms, the blood leaking down from the fresh cuts. She fell to her knees, staring at the wounds on her arms as though she was trying to understand what had just occurred.
"I warned you." A vicious growl came from 'Micheal, snapping Jessica out of her thoughts. "Now I suggest you contemplate your choice, and your greatly shortened life."
"You never were going to let me live anyway." Jessica spat, her face cringing in agony. "I… needed to do something…"
Micheal nodded.
"You are right. And I respect that." He took another step towards me, aiming his energy blaster at me. "I had wanted to torture you Greg, explain exactly what you had done,but with how you are right now you are way too dangerous to indulge in a bit of Karmic punishment. Now you just need to die before you wreck anything else that took half a decade to arrange."
I watched as the energy projector on his arm started to glow a deadly red.
"Everything personal, kid."
To everyone there, it looked like I was going to die. I could see the horrified look on Jessica's face as she realized that she was going to see yet another of her classmates being murdered in front of her eyes. I could almost feel the vicious smile that Micheal had under his helmet.
But the part of me that had taken control wasn't worried. It wasn't some cornered animal and It knew that it wasn't going to die so easily because of one thing.
My legs were now okay.
Like a shot, I rolled out of the way of Micheal's plasma blast, it splashing harmlessly against the floor, super heating the piece of pavement that I had just been lying on. I then leapt to my feet and lunged for him as he struggled to re-aim his arm at me. He was too slow and I rammed into him, throwing his left arm to the side. It was just in time as a stream of red energy orbs to erupt from the launcher, striking and melting the scaffold of the bus stop. I launched my best approximation of a right hook at the helmet, causing it to snap back out of reach as Micheal committed a hasty dodge. I then tried to grab for his neck with my other hand which was deflected by a soft blow from my assailant left arm.
I threw another punch not caring where it ended up while he blocked with his left arm and struck me in the stomach with the other.
I tried to kick him in the stomach but he counter kicked my leg out of position with his own, throwing me off balance where I immediately felt a flash of pain as his right fist struck my temple.
What next happened was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life as Micheal kept blocking and countering every blow that my rage-addled mind tried to throw at him. Every punch or kick I threw was either blocked, redirected or dodged, leaving me unable to react to his strikes. Had I been normal, I would have lost after a minute or so of that as his armoured strikes were more than powerful enough to snap my bones with each strike but no sooner had I heard that chilling snap, I would hear the bone snap back Into place.
And every repeated strike in a certain area, that crack was softer and softer until I could barely hear it all.
The part of me that had forced to play witness to my almost literal bezerker rage noted just how utterly broken my body was if it was correct. It looked like I was adapting somehow, like each punch was taking off less and less of my metaphorical HP to the point that my HP regen would outpace the damage to it.
If that was true, I was now the literally perfect bezerker class.
Unfortunately, Micheal realized that too.
I lunged at him, the angry part of my mind desperate to do any damage to him. In response, the Dark armoured man grabbed both of my wrists in a vice like grip while he retaliated with a full headbutt. I reeled back, clutching where I felt my skull crunch where the armoured helmet had struck my forehead. In that moment of distraction, I felt a blossoming pain in my stomach as Micheal kicked me away, into the wall of the half-melted bus stop shelter.
Micheal kicked himself away as I scrambled to my feet, some sort of jet propulsion making the hop take him a few feet into the middle of the street.
"See!" Micheal yelled, noticeably winded. "This is just what I wanted to avoid by killing you quickly! Now I guess my faithful slaves can deal with you."
Suddenly, I felt a shift in the air as Micheal's armour glowed a Bright red before the glow concentrated in his right arm. He then threw the ball of red energy behind him where it hanged in the air and expanded into a red rimmed circle showing a distorted image of a Hellscape.
Micheal had opened a portal to Hell, I just knew it in my bones. I looked for Jessica and found her on the other side of the overturned bus stop bench, having been damaged earlier in the fight. If that was a Hell Portal, I couldn't let her die to it. Moving myself between Jessica and the portal, I stared at Micheal and the portal, my raging self satisfied to wait for the Demons to come to me.
And we waited.
And waited.
"What the Hell?" Micheal asked softly, moving his head closer to the portal to inspect it.
He suddenly reared his head back in surprise as a large, fat head with a large gaping mouth with sharp, rotting teeth and a single green eye flew out of the portal. My surprise continued as a large figure in dark blue armour immediately followed it, swinging the largest sword that I had ever seen, straight at Micheal's neck.
Unlike me, the Black armoured man's obvious surprise was not total and he managed to leap back react fast enough to leap backwards. It was as though I was watching the blade in slow motion, the edge of the pitch-black blade scything ever towards Micheal's neck, the glowing red runes on the flat of the blade glowing balefully. Micheal was already in the air, his body almost horizontal as he leaned back so far that the blade would miss it's target.
And after a slow eternity, the very tip of the blade missed the Demon Lord's neck by centimeters.
Just like that, the moment was over. The blade wielder landed feet first from his leap, using the movement from his blade swing to bring his huge sword around in an arc and have It in a ready position in front of him. Micheal's leap, meanwhile, concluded his leap by somersaulting backwards as he hit the ground, coming to a stop in a three point crouch.
All was silent for a moment as the two armoured fighters stared at each other, even Jessica was silent as she watched them, her fingers moving almost automatically as they dug into her arms, extracting shards of bloodstained metal every time she dug her fingers in.
That was… definitely weird.
Then again, I couldn't exactly judge what normal meant. I had been reduced to a fleshy skeleton only two weeks ago after all.
"Of course, it just had to be you." Micheal ground out as he stood up, anger colouring his voice. "At first I thought it was you who managed to stop me, but no, you were just the same, stupid knight stuck in Hell doing nothing of consequence."
"Now, don't be so blaze, demon man." A light masculine voice reverberated from the blue knight's helmet. "I hear that organizing a demonic hunting party is quite the demanding feat, not to mention training the little things to stay still long enough to be ready to jump out of a personal portal to your defense. That must have been a lot of hours I just decapitated."
The amusement in the knight's tone was clear and I could see that, with how the Demon knight was literally shaking, the black armoured man was definitely not happy with whatever had just happened behind that portal.
"Enough." Micheal hissed out.
Then, the air blurred before me as Micheal was suddenly airborne, some sort of jets on his back pulsing with an eerie blue light, speeding towards the Knight at tremendous speed.
In less than a second, Micheal collided with the knight, a single glowing energy sword clashing with the knight's oversized sword, his opponent not even seemingly affected by the impact. I watched them as their blades struggled against each other in a contest of force, the red energy blade crackling with heat and unstable lightning as it pushed against the black steel blade of the sword, the symbols on it glowing even brighter.
The stalemate only lasted a second until the knight shoved the energy blade to the side, deflecting the momentum of the still hovering combatant, letting Micheal fly past the knight. Immediately after passing him, the blue light around Micheal disappeared, letting him fall to the floor in a crouch as he swiped his left arm behind him, the red energy blade connected to it, scything towards the knight's legs with deadly accuracy. The Knight from Hell was not idle however as he turned around almost as quickly as his opponent and deflected the glowing attack with an upward swing of his own blade.
Kicking off the ground, the blue glow behind Micheal reappeared as he lifted into the air, dodging a horizontal swing from the knight as he slashed downward with his own blade of deadly energy which was promptly repelled by an opposing force from its black steel counterpart.
The fight between them was fast. Micheal moved with the speed of someone using a light sabre and a jetpack, or at least I thought that was what the blue glow could be, while the knight hadn't really moved anywhere from his original spot but was wielding his massive Final Fantasy sword as though it was made of recycled paper cups.
And based on the loud clang that it made whenever it hit something solid, it definitely was not made out of paper.
I looked behind me, my vision filling with the image of Jessica somehow bandaging her arms simultaneously.
I looked back to the fight, but my mind was elsewhere.
More specifically, within itself.
It was stupid, cliché even to try and have an internal revelation when there was two guys from what was apparently, actually Hell fight a battle in front of me that had the pacing of those in anime. I, as Greg Veder, had seen enough Shonen and video games to know where this was going and should be trying to get both Jessica and I out of the proverbial splash zone.
It was unfortunate that I didn't exactly feel like Greg at the moment.
It felt… stupid to even think but it felt as though I shouldn't be like this.
Part of me shouldn't be considering jumping into that fight in front of me with a yell.
I should be running away from all this, or trying to crawl into a ball and hide somewhere.
I should have done this.
I remembered that I would have.
But not now.
Now there was a part of me, wanting to Rip, Tear and KILL the person that dared trying doing the same thing with me.
Back at Winslow, I didn't have time to really think, I just acted. The two weeks after were a result of me just wanting to play video games and forget that my life ever changed.
Here, now, I felt that I could see the distinction.
On one side was Greg Veder, high-school nerd who had been bullied for years who took all measures to avoid any confrontation (except over the internet)
On the other was Greg Veder, someone who had killed, butchered and brutalized most of a reanimated high school, with demons, and wanted more.
That Greg wanted so much more to die.
Who was I? The second Greg, the one who wanted to keep killing everything scared some primal part of me but I couldn't ever imagine even being the first Greg, being so afraid of things that didn't even matter.
Who was… what was I?
…
I am…
This…
What if…
This is…
This…
This.
Is.
Stupid.
I shook myself out of my thoughts.
I wasn't some sort of badly written emo character who had to choose between two equally extreme sides.
I was the Greg Veder that hated both of those images of myself.
I am the Greg that I am, not what I was or could be.
I Am the Greg that will Kill that stupid, evil fucker who said Demons were a good thing and proceed to shitpost on PHO on how stupid his helmet looks later.
With that identity crisis resolved, I ran towards the fight, my legs carrying myself at surprising speed towards the reason I was introspective for the purpose of a well deserved punch.
I, Greg Veder, never liked, liked, or will like being introspective.
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Jessica never really had a good relationship with pain.
She wasn't particularly sporty, so she wasn't used to the eventual accidents that came with sports. She had a good home life, didn't live in a rough area and hadn't even really been in a violent crime before the Incident.
A few days before she had been kidnapped that fateful day, a fall and a bloody scrape against a loose piece of a sidewalk had been enough to incapacitate her for at least an hour.
Pulling the left bandage at a thirty-degree angle will manage to further decrease fluid loss by forty percent without affecting circulation. Reflecting this action on the right bandage will further increase this to eighty percent.
Barely listening to the voice in her head as she did what it said, she further wrapped the wounds on her arms with the bandages she had packed in her bag. Bandages that wouldn't have even been there if her power hadn't told her exactly how likely that she, or someone she knew, would get injured if she went around looking for cults.
The only reason that Jessica hadn't passed out or broke down crying from the pain right now was that when she used her power, everything felt… lesser somehow, including her sense of pain.
Thankfully, there didn't seem to be a limit to how long she could use her power for.
Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be a limit to what she could use her power for either.
Jessica wasn't blind. She knew exactly how much she had been using her power since she had first gotten them, her power regularly told her when she wondered about it, but what else was she supposed to do when she had such a blatantly useful power?
It even helped her trying to help another person!
Well… Before her gun exploded at least.
She should have been upset at that, either shaking in fear of someone who could just outright destroy something made out of cast-iron and steel with little thought, or even frustration at all those sleepless nights that resulted in a bunch of shrapnel embedded in her shirt and arms.
Hell, she had been close to browning her shorts just a little awhile ago when it looked like she was staring death in the face. Even now, a small part of her held on to that terror.
Instead she felt… needy. It had even started when she had seen Greg being impaled by that energy blade and she saw the small, arm mounted energy projector that was making it. A normal girl would have screamed out when someone in front of you suddenly grows armour and impales a nearby… acquaintance with a big glowing blade but, after seeing that beauty of mystery and engineering, she just couldn't look away as her eyes roamed over every curve and angle of that little armour piece.
Her power had even been rattling off its own observations in her head so quickly that it sounded more like a bad dial-up connection, with Jessica managing to understand every word of it.
It had taken Greg breaking it somehow to even bring her back to reality.
But that same feeling returned when she saw her Gauss bolt absolutely failed to affect "Micheal's" armour in any way, and only magnified when she managed to spot the second energy projector that he had aimed at her.
Even now, with her life potentially in danger, she was barely paying attention to treating her wounds and instead kept the majority of her attention on the fight happening in front of her.
The technology in that wrist… whatever was letting the armoured man float… It was so similar to what she had seen in Sci-fi shows that it just had to be to be Tinkertech.
Except it wasn't.
Being the 'Cape Capital' of the USA, It wasn't hard to find examples of actual Tinkertech in Brockton Bay and whenever she did manage to see some, her power would rattle off a whole bunch of nonsense terms and terminology that she didn't understand.
But everything her power said when she looked at that armour, she understood. It didn't work like normal energy should but she knew exactly why, it was using an energy source that she had been using for weeks now…
Hell Energy, the entire armour was running off Hell energy.
Even that huge sword that knight was carrying around had some sort of carvings in it that contained Hell Energy, making the blade a lot stronger than it should have been.
No matter what she wanted to do, run away or help, she couldn't because her mind was almost overflowing with ideas as she watched the two fight.
So invested she was in the act of bandaging herself, she feel the blood dripping out of her nose and she didn't see the enraged, semi-naked teen running to join the fight.
There was just too much to see.
So much data…
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It dimly occurred to me that I was running into a fight straight out of an Earth Aleph anime.
Sadly, Bet Japan never really recovered.
Regardless, I was pretty much an anime character at this point so I guessed it was appropriate.
Ahead of me, I saw Micheal, his black armour surrounded by a blue field, as he quickly deflected a swing from the blue armoured knight.
I managed to reach them as Micheal stood up too his full height, his large blade dissipating as the energy projector on his arm charged up with Red Delicious energy, aimed at the knight who was ready to catch the incoming blast on his blade.
I didn't let that happen.
My charged crashed into his arm, my sheer speed, mass and strength forcing his arm off its aim, the plasma blast zooming past the knight and tearing up the tar road beyond.
I span around and punched at the section below Micheal's main breastplate. Unlike the other parts of the armour I punched, it dented under the force of my blow.
My right fist, going in for a second punch, was caught by a gauntleted hand at the last moment, crushing my hand bones.
"Not you again." Micheal commented in distaste. "Fuck off."
With the last word, I felt the impact of a power assisted leg in my stomach area as Micheal kicked me away. I felt the strain in my spine as I was sent flying, but couldn't help but smile as I saw the Knight take advantage of the distraction and smack Micheal in the helmet with a swing of his sword, flipping him end over end through sheer force. While in mid-air, Micheal's armour glowed blue once again and he flipped himself upright, kicking the blade away.
By the time I hit the floor and scrambled to my feet, my wounds had already regenerated and I charged once again.
I slammed into Micheal's back, throwing off a swing of his blade as I punched him in the side, the metal denting under my fist once again. He retaliated my throwing me backwards and hitting me in the chest with a small plasma blast, throwing me back as my flesh, and the remnants of my shirt and jacket, either combusted or melted. For his trouble, he received another slash to the back of his armour.
To an observer, it must have looked like I had lost it. That I was just blindly charging in and getting beaten up for it. Well, that was actually happening but I wasn't insane however, I had a plan.
It was obvious that Micheal was using some sort of power armour and that of course needed a source of power, hence the name.
What better source for a self-professed Demon lord to use but the Energy of Hell itself.
Energy that at least one part of me wanted to devour like a five-year old given sugar pancakes. Energy that my hungry and violent side of me wanted to badly get so it was subtly pulling me into that direction, which inadvertently told me exactly where the power lines were in his suit.
Funnily enough I noticed quite a few of these areas felt stronger than others, and all these locations happened to be in between the visible plates of armour.
When I had first charged in, I had hoped that meant that those sections were weaker than the rest of the armour.
The dents in those places were all the confirmation I needed to know that I had found the weak point of this boss fight.
Well… Not weak point exactly but it would give me a fighting chance at least.
So my plan was simple, break the power so that it leaks and I get stronger while he gets weaker.
With my flesh finished regenerating, I now had the necessary core muscles to get to my feet again and charge again.
This time, the Knight saw my charge and, for the first time, moved from his position to charge a surprised Micheal. The clash of blades was short, resulting in a contest of strength as the two combatants locked blades with each other.
With Micheal stuck doing one thing, I struck.
First, a charging fist smacked the the dented area of armour on his back, further crumpling it. Gripping the edges of crumpled metal, I pulled. With a metallic groan and crack, the metal armour came loose in that area, showing the incredibly complicated circuitry beneath.
Dimly, I noticed the sound of cloth hitting the ground across the road.
"What are you doing?!" Micheal tried to turn my way but the Knight exerted more pressure on the blade lock, forcing him to continue facing the blue Knight.
"Don't be rude," The Knight jeered, his breaths heavy. "We are having quite a nice fight over here."
Ignoring the conversation, I noticed a singular tube of glowing red energy in the centre of the circuits.
With no hesitation, I grabbed hold of the tube and ripped it out.
The circuit board erupted into sparks and I could feel the energy leaking from it.
I felt it less as Micheal shoved the knight back and kicked me in the face, sending me rolling backwards.
I could feel my jaw and teeth break from the impact, but I could also feel them heal faster.
I stood up, ignoring my rapidly healing head injury with a blood-stained grin.
It was working!
My plan was working!
My internal celebration only increased as I saw the helmeted face of the Demon armor helmet glaring at the fingers of his right hand, all of them seemingly glitching erratically.
I prepared myself to charge again, with the enthusiasm I always felt when suddenly realizing exactly how to defeat a boss encounter.
Maybe that wasn't the right mindset to have in a fight, but it seemed that I was nigh unkillable at the moment anyway, so I could forgive myself for not exactly seeing this in the most appropriate light.
Of course, then the Demon Lord did something I didn't expect.
"You know, what?" Micheal suddenly spoke up, his voice filled with irritation as he glared towards me. "No."
"No?" I asked lamely, not really getting what he meant.
"No." He confirmed. "I've worked far too hard to risk even a small amount of progress wasting time fighting you two idiots."
With that, the blue glow surrounded Micheal once again, flickering slightly, and his armoured form rose into the air.
"Where in the Hell are you going?" I yelled to the floating man.
Micheal scoffed.
"To do more important things than killing a nuisance," He sent a glare towards the knight, who shrugged. "and a lucky half-breed."
Micheal raised higher in the air.
"Nothing you do can stop Earth Bet from being saved. Even your delays are inconsequential. So try to fight me, I promise you will lose."
Then, in a bright flash of blue light, The dark armoured man zoomed away.
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Silence echoed throughout the street as the Knight and I just stood there, looking at the location where the Demon Lord just was.
"Don't worry about what he said." The Knight spoke towards me, his comparatively normal visor focused on me. "I've learned through experience that if Micheal is ranting, then he is on the verge of absolute rage."
"Well, um." I replied with grace. "Thank you, I guess?"
"You should be proud of yourself, boy!" The knight proclaimed joyously. "When you stopped his invasion the first time, you could hear him from the next Demon realm over. Of course that would only be the beginning."
"Wait, the beginning?" I asked.
"Of course! Now that you stopped him the first time, he is only going to try harder to actually drag this whole dimension into Hell. Which means that Its up to you, and me, to keep stopping him."
"No, no,no. You have this all wrong." I denied. Clearly this man, aside the necessary insanity from literally appearing from Hell, was insane to think I was actually a protaganist. "I was just the Right, absolutely normal kid in the right place. I am not some sort of guy who goes around looking to save people."
"Oh, then why are you here?"
I thought back to the exact reason I had went to that warehouse this morning, and immediately cringed.
"I… I was just curious." I admitted hesitantly, aware of how such a reason blew a hole in my argument.
I couldn't see his face behind the full plated helm, but I got the distinct impression of a smug grin.
"That doesn't mean anything." I hastily added. "An NPC is fully capable of getting into trouble because of curiosity."
"Yes, but who did Micheal try to trap and kill?"
I stayed silent at that, realizing that, as much as I hated it, he wasn't wrong.
"Look, I may be explaining this badly, but the way I see it, Micheal blames you, is going to try to kill you and set off a demonic invasion that will likely kill everyone you know. It makes sense to stop that, don't you think?"
"Yeah, I guess, but…"
"Look, I get it, you don't want to actually commit to fighting Demons, you probably thought of it as a 'might as well' kind of thing. Trust me, I was the same but You will feel different about it later on."
I stayed silent as I had no idea how to respond to that but deep thought.
"And don't think too hard about that Half-breed comment. Its probably a case of reverse possession rather than parentage anyway."
"What?"
"You see, based on how you regenerated from literal mortal wounds, I would guess that, instead of rejecting the energies of Hell like most organic beings, you must have won the genetic lottery and your body actually absorbs it. Then a minor demon must have tried to posses you, shredding your soul but then thanks to actually liking demon energy, your soul probably ate the demon back, using the soul bit of it as some sort of soul glue while your body subsisted on the energy."
I could do nothing but stare at the Knight, my mouth agape.
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 felt my shock and unnatural calm break.
I felt myself fill with RAGE
They needed to die.
It made a lot of sense actually. Too much sense.
"How do you know all this?" I asked.
"Oh, I've been rambling haven't I?" The Knight asked himself more than me. "I'm sorry. I'm just so excited to actually be out of Hell for the first time in millennia. You have no idea how many Oracles I have bribed in order to be prepared for this moment."
"Okay?"
"But hey, I'm here now, and definitely ready to help the only person that has given Micheal a pseudo-aneurysm in at least four years."
"I don't even know if you are human or not!"
"Well, I was about a millennia ago at least. I guess the answer would be… mostly?"
"Really?" I glared at him for such a vague answer.
"Hell changes you." The Knight shrugged. "But shouldn't you be more worried about her?"
He pointed past me. Turning around, I saw the collapsed form of Jessica, lying on the ground with blood slowly dripping from her nose. I felt my chest clench in worry as I ran over to her. Reaching her, I breathed out a sigh of relief to see that she was in fact breathing properly and seemingly in a peaceful sleep.
"Well, I guess her power must have overwhelmed her a bit. It does that when it comes to Thinkers."
"Thinkers?" I asked pointedly as I looked back behind me at the Knight.
"Look, I'm just going to go now, I don't have any money so in order to stay I'm probably going to have to loot a few gangers to get by. I'll… see you around."
"Just who the Hell are you anyway?" I yelled as he began walking away, his sword strapped to his back."
"The name is Ned!"
I watched at the Hell man named Ned walked down the dark street, eventually pinching my nose at, by far, the weirdest conversation I've ever had.
And I accidentally managed to get Sparky to give me an abridged version of the Birds and the Bees.
I let out a sigh as I resigned myself to be the one to take Jessica home, despite my blood-stained state of undress.
Hopefully, she has her address in her wallet…
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I sincerely hope that the writing was enjoyable.
I could feel my flesh bubbling around the large energy blade in my gut, in a perpetual state of healing and being cauterized. I could feel the heat in my ribcage of what I imagined a lightsabre to feel like as it continued scorching my bones. I felt nauseas but my stomach had been near evaporated by Michael's blade so all I could do was shudder as I dry-heaved. The rage that I had felt so often when near demonic things felt like it was literally boiling in my blood.
The part of me that had absently watched those medical dramas with my mom was telling me that there was no way that I should even be awake now, little alone struggling on a glowing red energy blade. Every time someone in those shows appears with a pipe or something in them, they are always either dying or close to it. Why was I still awake? Why do I still feel everything?
Why was I so Angry?
"That's odd. I thought you'd be de-" Michael's musings were Interrupted by the sudden introduction of my fist against the front of his helmet. I absently noted the cracking of my finger bones as my fist struck the black steel of the helmet. The armoured head barely moved, my strike slightly turning his head, a smear of red blood prominently displayed on the side of the helmet.
I wasn't in the right mind to care.
"What the-" the armoured man was cut off again as my other fist slammed against his helmet, releasing another sound of crunching bone and a spurt of blood. I felt nothing but pain and rage as my fists rained down on his helmet, slowly but surely covering it in a thin coating of blood from my constantly breaking and regenerating fists, breaking less each time. Through the pain and rage, a simple thought came to me, and my bloodied hands gripped the energy projector and tried to rip it off from the man's vambrace on his right arm, the one that occupied holding me aloft.
"Let go of that!" he yelled, his own unoccupied fist starting its assault on me. I felt his fist slam into my head and chest repeatedly but it wasn't enough for me to stop even as I felt my bones break where what could only be the power armoured fist landed.
Even though it had only been a second, it had felt like forever until the energy blade's projector shifted, breaking hundreds of electrical connections and throwing out noticeably red sparks into the air. The biggest change came about when I felt the blade impaling me suddenly disappear and I fell to the ground, collapsing onto my back.
I lay there, the mists of rage clearing from my mind as I regenerated. It felt weird, feeling my charcoaled flesh suddenly come to life with pain as the nerves slowly regenerated inside the regrowing flesh. It felt even weirder to somehow feel my spine realigning itself as my bones unbroke themselves. I felt every injury as I lay there, the pain dragging seconds into minutes, but, somehow, I felt stronger than I had ever been.
And I felt stronger still with every red spark that emitted from Micheal's broken projector.
As for Micheal himself. I was dimly aware of him simply stare at my wounds for a few seconds until he cursed.
"Of course," he spat, looking up to the sky in what I think was exasperation. "Its just my luck that the one to mess up all my plans had to be a damned hybrid…"
With a sigh, Micheal looked down at me, stretching his neck. I just wanted to lay there but a deep part of me snarled at him, demanding that I stand up and attack him. For the first time, that urge to commit violence, that rage that had burned in me for weeks felt alien in its sheer intensity.
The part of me that was barely thinking, the part that enjoyed his weekends playing a four year old RPG and posting stuff online, couldn't feel anger through all the pain but something else did.
And as I succumbed to it once again, I noticed for the first time and was terrified.
Then I felt rage.
My body spasmed as I tried to lift myself to my feet, trying to move legs that weren't exactly ready to move yet. All I could manage was to sit up as my legs struggled and failed to hold my weight. I felt a scowl form on my face, directed at that expressionless black helmet.
I watched as the man known as Micheal stepped closer to me, staring down at my prone form all the while.
"Stop!" I heard a feminine yell next to me. I turned my head and saw Jessica, standing further away from the both of us, her odd techno gun in her hands with a shaky grip and her opened bag at her feet. "Get away from him!"
My assailant tilted his helmeted head at her, the glowing, blood red visor reflecting off Jessica's scared but determined eyes.
It was odd the things you noticed at a time like this.
"How about, no?" Micheal chuckled. "Or do you really think that your little science project would get through Hell-forged obsidian plate?"
"I'm w-warning you!" Jessica stuttered out. "I don't want to, but I'll kill you if I have to."
I got the vague impression that the demon armoured man took on a thoughtful look.
"You didn't seem to hesitate when it came to Nathan two weeks ago. Did you even know that he had a family when you killed him in that gym hall?" Jessica's face went white but Micheal continued, a definite tone of amusement colouring his voice. "Oh, I've had a long chat with every one of my acolytes who died that day and they were so eager to tell me exactly who was responsible for their failure that day. Poor Nathan was so eager to talk that I didn't even get to using the spikes yet."
Micheal's posture took on a more threatening stance. I felt my vertebrae shift as my nerves solidified into the nerve cord. My legs could move more.
"I know who you are Jessica and everything about you, just as I thought I knew everything to know about Greg here." He gestured towards me. "I suggest you leave, Jessica Winters, unless you want to share the fate of your little demonic friend here."
Micheal turned back towards me and took another step.
"I am literally a Lord in Hell, you have no idea how little you would inconvenience me."
I have no idea what was going on in Jessica's mind at that moment. Had I been my old self, I was slightly ashamed to know that I would have run away, hoping to find someone stronger to help.
I saw a bright beam of light leave Jessica's gun as she fired with her railgun's distinctive roar, too fast for me to see the projectile. The beam was aimed right at the armoured man's head, where it was met by what seemed to be a golden coloured energy shield. Almost instantly, Micheal spun towards Jessica, his left arm extended. A red ball of energy left a projector on his arm and struck Jessica's gun, causing it to explode and shatter in her hands. She screamed as the shards of her gun embedded in her hands and arms, the blood leaking down from the fresh cuts. She fell to her knees, staring at the wounds on her arms as though she was trying to understand what had just occurred.
"I warned you." A vicious growl came from 'Micheal, snapping Jessica out of her thoughts. "Now I suggest you contemplate your choice, and your greatly shortened life."
"You never were going to let me live anyway." Jessica spat, her face cringing in agony. "I… needed to do something…"
Micheal nodded.
"You are right. And I respect that." He took another step towards me, aiming his energy blaster at me. "I had wanted to torture you Greg, explain exactly what you had done,but with how you are right now you are way too dangerous to indulge in a bit of Karmic punishment. Now you just need to die before you wreck anything else that took half a decade to arrange."
I watched as the energy projector on his arm started to glow a deadly red.
"Everything personal, kid."
To everyone there, it looked like I was going to die. I could see the horrified look on Jessica's face as she realized that she was going to see yet another of her classmates being murdered in front of her eyes. I could almost feel the vicious smile that Micheal had under his helmet.
But the part of me that had taken control wasn't worried. It wasn't some cornered animal and It knew that it wasn't going to die so easily because of one thing.
My legs were now okay.
Like a shot, I rolled out of the way of Micheal's plasma blast, it splashing harmlessly against the floor, super heating the piece of pavement that I had just been lying on. I then leapt to my feet and lunged for him as he struggled to re-aim his arm at me. He was too slow and I rammed into him, throwing his left arm to the side. It was just in time as a stream of red energy orbs to erupt from the launcher, striking and melting the scaffold of the bus stop. I launched my best approximation of a right hook at the helmet, causing it to snap back out of reach as Micheal committed a hasty dodge. I then tried to grab for his neck with my other hand which was deflected by a soft blow from my assailant left arm.
I threw another punch not caring where it ended up while he blocked with his left arm and struck me in the stomach with the other.
I tried to kick him in the stomach but he counter kicked my leg out of position with his own, throwing me off balance where I immediately felt a flash of pain as his right fist struck my temple.
What next happened was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life as Micheal kept blocking and countering every blow that my rage-addled mind tried to throw at him. Every punch or kick I threw was either blocked, redirected or dodged, leaving me unable to react to his strikes. Had I been normal, I would have lost after a minute or so of that as his armoured strikes were more than powerful enough to snap my bones with each strike but no sooner had I heard that chilling snap, I would hear the bone snap back Into place.
And every repeated strike in a certain area, that crack was softer and softer until I could barely hear it all.
The part of me that had forced to play witness to my almost literal bezerker rage noted just how utterly broken my body was if it was correct. It looked like I was adapting somehow, like each punch was taking off less and less of my metaphorical HP to the point that my HP regen would outpace the damage to it.
If that was true, I was now the literally perfect bezerker class.
Unfortunately, Micheal realized that too.
I lunged at him, the angry part of my mind desperate to do any damage to him. In response, the Dark armoured man grabbed both of my wrists in a vice like grip while he retaliated with a full headbutt. I reeled back, clutching where I felt my skull crunch where the armoured helmet had struck my forehead. In that moment of distraction, I felt a blossoming pain in my stomach as Micheal kicked me away, into the wall of the half-melted bus stop shelter.
Micheal kicked himself away as I scrambled to my feet, some sort of jet propulsion making the hop take him a few feet into the middle of the street.
"See!" Micheal yelled, noticeably winded. "This is just what I wanted to avoid by killing you quickly! Now I guess my faithful slaves can deal with you."
Suddenly, I felt a shift in the air as Micheal's armour glowed a Bright red before the glow concentrated in his right arm. He then threw the ball of red energy behind him where it hanged in the air and expanded into a red rimmed circle showing a distorted image of a Hellscape.
Micheal had opened a portal to Hell, I just knew it in my bones. I looked for Jessica and found her on the other side of the overturned bus stop bench, having been damaged earlier in the fight. If that was a Hell Portal, I couldn't let her die to it. Moving myself between Jessica and the portal, I stared at Micheal and the portal, my raging self satisfied to wait for the Demons to come to me.
And we waited.
And waited.
"What the Hell?" Micheal asked softly, moving his head closer to the portal to inspect it.
He suddenly reared his head back in surprise as a large, fat head with a large gaping mouth with sharp, rotting teeth and a single green eye flew out of the portal. My surprise continued as a large figure in dark blue armour immediately followed it, swinging the largest sword that I had ever seen, straight at Micheal's neck.
Unlike me, the Black armoured man's obvious surprise was not total and he managed to leap back react fast enough to leap backwards. It was as though I was watching the blade in slow motion, the edge of the pitch-black blade scything ever towards Micheal's neck, the glowing red runes on the flat of the blade glowing balefully. Micheal was already in the air, his body almost horizontal as he leaned back so far that the blade would miss it's target.
And after a slow eternity, the very tip of the blade missed the Demon Lord's neck by centimeters.
Just like that, the moment was over. The blade wielder landed feet first from his leap, using the movement from his blade swing to bring his huge sword around in an arc and have It in a ready position in front of him. Micheal's leap, meanwhile, concluded his leap by somersaulting backwards as he hit the ground, coming to a stop in a three point crouch.
All was silent for a moment as the two armoured fighters stared at each other, even Jessica was silent as she watched them, her fingers moving almost automatically as they dug into her arms, extracting shards of bloodstained metal every time she dug her fingers in.
That was… definitely weird.
Then again, I couldn't exactly judge what normal meant. I had been reduced to a fleshy skeleton only two weeks ago after all.
"Of course, it just had to be you." Micheal ground out as he stood up, anger colouring his voice. "At first I thought it was you who managed to stop me, but no, you were just the same, stupid knight stuck in Hell doing nothing of consequence."
"Now, don't be so blaze, demon man." A light masculine voice reverberated from the blue knight's helmet. "I hear that organizing a demonic hunting party is quite the demanding feat, not to mention training the little things to stay still long enough to be ready to jump out of a personal portal to your defense. That must have been a lot of hours I just decapitated."
The amusement in the knight's tone was clear and I could see that, with how the Demon knight was literally shaking, the black armoured man was definitely not happy with whatever had just happened behind that portal.
"Enough." Micheal hissed out.
Then, the air blurred before me as Micheal was suddenly airborne, some sort of jets on his back pulsing with an eerie blue light, speeding towards the Knight at tremendous speed.
In less than a second, Micheal collided with the knight, a single glowing energy sword clashing with the knight's oversized sword, his opponent not even seemingly affected by the impact. I watched them as their blades struggled against each other in a contest of force, the red energy blade crackling with heat and unstable lightning as it pushed against the black steel blade of the sword, the symbols on it glowing even brighter.
The stalemate only lasted a second until the knight shoved the energy blade to the side, deflecting the momentum of the still hovering combatant, letting Micheal fly past the knight. Immediately after passing him, the blue light around Micheal disappeared, letting him fall to the floor in a crouch as he swiped his left arm behind him, the red energy blade connected to it, scything towards the knight's legs with deadly accuracy. The Knight from Hell was not idle however as he turned around almost as quickly as his opponent and deflected the glowing attack with an upward swing of his own blade.
Kicking off the ground, the blue glow behind Micheal reappeared as he lifted into the air, dodging a horizontal swing from the knight as he slashed downward with his own blade of deadly energy which was promptly repelled by an opposing force from its black steel counterpart.
The fight between them was fast. Micheal moved with the speed of someone using a light sabre and a jetpack, or at least I thought that was what the blue glow could be, while the knight hadn't really moved anywhere from his original spot but was wielding his massive Final Fantasy sword as though it was made of recycled paper cups.
And based on the loud clang that it made whenever it hit something solid, it definitely was not made out of paper.
I looked behind me, my vision filling with the image of Jessica somehow bandaging her arms simultaneously.
I looked back to the fight, but my mind was elsewhere.
More specifically, within itself.
It was stupid, cliché even to try and have an internal revelation when there was two guys from what was apparently, actually Hell fight a battle in front of me that had the pacing of those in anime. I, as Greg Veder, had seen enough Shonen and video games to know where this was going and should be trying to get both Jessica and I out of the proverbial splash zone.
It was unfortunate that I didn't exactly feel like Greg at the moment.
It felt… stupid to even think but it felt as though I shouldn't be like this.
Part of me shouldn't be considering jumping into that fight in front of me with a yell.
I should be running away from all this, or trying to crawl into a ball and hide somewhere.
I should have done this.
I remembered that I would have.
But not now.
Now there was a part of me, wanting to Rip, Tear and KILL the person that dared trying doing the same thing with me.
Back at Winslow, I didn't have time to really think, I just acted. The two weeks after were a result of me just wanting to play video games and forget that my life ever changed.
Here, now, I felt that I could see the distinction.
On one side was Greg Veder, high-school nerd who had been bullied for years who took all measures to avoid any confrontation (except over the internet)
On the other was Greg Veder, someone who had killed, butchered and brutalized most of a reanimated high school, with demons, and wanted more.
That Greg wanted so much more to die.
Who was I? The second Greg, the one who wanted to keep killing everything scared some primal part of me but I couldn't ever imagine even being the first Greg, being so afraid of things that didn't even matter.
Who was… what was I?
…
I am…
This…
What if…
This is…
This…
This.
Is.
Stupid.
I shook myself out of my thoughts.
I wasn't some sort of badly written emo character who had to choose between two equally extreme sides.
I was the Greg Veder that hated both of those images of myself.
I am the Greg that I am, not what I was or could be.
I Am the Greg that will Kill that stupid, evil fucker who said Demons were a good thing and proceed to shitpost on PHO on how stupid his helmet looks later.
With that identity crisis resolved, I ran towards the fight, my legs carrying myself at surprising speed towards the reason I was introspective for the purpose of a well deserved punch.
I, Greg Veder, never liked, liked, or will like being introspective.
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Jessica never really had a good relationship with pain.
She wasn't particularly sporty, so she wasn't used to the eventual accidents that came with sports. She had a good home life, didn't live in a rough area and hadn't even really been in a violent crime before the Incident.
A few days before she had been kidnapped that fateful day, a fall and a bloody scrape against a loose piece of a sidewalk had been enough to incapacitate her for at least an hour.
Pulling the left bandage at a thirty-degree angle will manage to further decrease fluid loss by forty percent without affecting circulation. Reflecting this action on the right bandage will further increase this to eighty percent.
Barely listening to the voice in her head as she did what it said, she further wrapped the wounds on her arms with the bandages she had packed in her bag. Bandages that wouldn't have even been there if her power hadn't told her exactly how likely that she, or someone she knew, would get injured if she went around looking for cults.
The only reason that Jessica hadn't passed out or broke down crying from the pain right now was that when she used her power, everything felt… lesser somehow, including her sense of pain.
Thankfully, there didn't seem to be a limit to how long she could use her power for.
Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be a limit to what she could use her power for either.
Jessica wasn't blind. She knew exactly how much she had been using her power since she had first gotten them, her power regularly told her when she wondered about it, but what else was she supposed to do when she had such a blatantly useful power?
It even helped her trying to help another person!
Well… Before her gun exploded at least.
She should have been upset at that, either shaking in fear of someone who could just outright destroy something made out of cast-iron and steel with little thought, or even frustration at all those sleepless nights that resulted in a bunch of shrapnel embedded in her shirt and arms.
Hell, she had been close to browning her shorts just a little awhile ago when it looked like she was staring death in the face. Even now, a small part of her held on to that terror.
Instead she felt… needy. It had even started when she had seen Greg being impaled by that energy blade and she saw the small, arm mounted energy projector that was making it. A normal girl would have screamed out when someone in front of you suddenly grows armour and impales a nearby… acquaintance with a big glowing blade but, after seeing that beauty of mystery and engineering, she just couldn't look away as her eyes roamed over every curve and angle of that little armour piece.
Her power had even been rattling off its own observations in her head so quickly that it sounded more like a bad dial-up connection, with Jessica managing to understand every word of it.
It had taken Greg breaking it somehow to even bring her back to reality.
But that same feeling returned when she saw her Gauss bolt absolutely failed to affect "Micheal's" armour in any way, and only magnified when she managed to spot the second energy projector that he had aimed at her.
Even now, with her life potentially in danger, she was barely paying attention to treating her wounds and instead kept the majority of her attention on the fight happening in front of her.
The technology in that wrist… whatever was letting the armoured man float… It was so similar to what she had seen in Sci-fi shows that it just had to be to be Tinkertech.
Except it wasn't.
Being the 'Cape Capital' of the USA, It wasn't hard to find examples of actual Tinkertech in Brockton Bay and whenever she did manage to see some, her power would rattle off a whole bunch of nonsense terms and terminology that she didn't understand.
But everything her power said when she looked at that armour, she understood. It didn't work like normal energy should but she knew exactly why, it was using an energy source that she had been using for weeks now…
Hell Energy, the entire armour was running off Hell energy.
Even that huge sword that knight was carrying around had some sort of carvings in it that contained Hell Energy, making the blade a lot stronger than it should have been.
No matter what she wanted to do, run away or help, she couldn't because her mind was almost overflowing with ideas as she watched the two fight.
So invested she was in the act of bandaging herself, she feel the blood dripping out of her nose and she didn't see the enraged, semi-naked teen running to join the fight.
There was just too much to see.
So much data…
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It dimly occurred to me that I was running into a fight straight out of an Earth Aleph anime.
Sadly, Bet Japan never really recovered.
Regardless, I was pretty much an anime character at this point so I guessed it was appropriate.
Ahead of me, I saw Micheal, his black armour surrounded by a blue field, as he quickly deflected a swing from the blue armoured knight.
I managed to reach them as Micheal stood up too his full height, his large blade dissipating as the energy projector on his arm charged up with Red Delicious energy, aimed at the knight who was ready to catch the incoming blast on his blade.
I didn't let that happen.
My charged crashed into his arm, my sheer speed, mass and strength forcing his arm off its aim, the plasma blast zooming past the knight and tearing up the tar road beyond.
I span around and punched at the section below Micheal's main breastplate. Unlike the other parts of the armour I punched, it dented under the force of my blow.
My right fist, going in for a second punch, was caught by a gauntleted hand at the last moment, crushing my hand bones.
"Not you again." Micheal commented in distaste. "Fuck off."
With the last word, I felt the impact of a power assisted leg in my stomach area as Micheal kicked me away. I felt the strain in my spine as I was sent flying, but couldn't help but smile as I saw the Knight take advantage of the distraction and smack Micheal in the helmet with a swing of his sword, flipping him end over end through sheer force. While in mid-air, Micheal's armour glowed blue once again and he flipped himself upright, kicking the blade away.
By the time I hit the floor and scrambled to my feet, my wounds had already regenerated and I charged once again.
I slammed into Micheal's back, throwing off a swing of his blade as I punched him in the side, the metal denting under my fist once again. He retaliated my throwing me backwards and hitting me in the chest with a small plasma blast, throwing me back as my flesh, and the remnants of my shirt and jacket, either combusted or melted. For his trouble, he received another slash to the back of his armour.
To an observer, it must have looked like I had lost it. That I was just blindly charging in and getting beaten up for it. Well, that was actually happening but I wasn't insane however, I had a plan.
It was obvious that Micheal was using some sort of power armour and that of course needed a source of power, hence the name.
What better source for a self-professed Demon lord to use but the Energy of Hell itself.
Energy that at least one part of me wanted to devour like a five-year old given sugar pancakes. Energy that my hungry and violent side of me wanted to badly get so it was subtly pulling me into that direction, which inadvertently told me exactly where the power lines were in his suit.
Funnily enough I noticed quite a few of these areas felt stronger than others, and all these locations happened to be in between the visible plates of armour.
When I had first charged in, I had hoped that meant that those sections were weaker than the rest of the armour.
The dents in those places were all the confirmation I needed to know that I had found the weak point of this boss fight.
Well… Not weak point exactly but it would give me a fighting chance at least.
So my plan was simple, break the power so that it leaks and I get stronger while he gets weaker.
With my flesh finished regenerating, I now had the necessary core muscles to get to my feet again and charge again.
This time, the Knight saw my charge and, for the first time, moved from his position to charge a surprised Micheal. The clash of blades was short, resulting in a contest of strength as the two combatants locked blades with each other.
With Micheal stuck doing one thing, I struck.
First, a charging fist smacked the the dented area of armour on his back, further crumpling it. Gripping the edges of crumpled metal, I pulled. With a metallic groan and crack, the metal armour came loose in that area, showing the incredibly complicated circuitry beneath.
Dimly, I noticed the sound of cloth hitting the ground across the road.
"What are you doing?!" Micheal tried to turn my way but the Knight exerted more pressure on the blade lock, forcing him to continue facing the blue Knight.
"Don't be rude," The Knight jeered, his breaths heavy. "We are having quite a nice fight over here."
Ignoring the conversation, I noticed a singular tube of glowing red energy in the centre of the circuits.
With no hesitation, I grabbed hold of the tube and ripped it out.
The circuit board erupted into sparks and I could feel the energy leaking from it.
I felt it less as Micheal shoved the knight back and kicked me in the face, sending me rolling backwards.
I could feel my jaw and teeth break from the impact, but I could also feel them heal faster.
I stood up, ignoring my rapidly healing head injury with a blood-stained grin.
It was working!
My plan was working!
My internal celebration only increased as I saw the helmeted face of the Demon armor helmet glaring at the fingers of his right hand, all of them seemingly glitching erratically.
I prepared myself to charge again, with the enthusiasm I always felt when suddenly realizing exactly how to defeat a boss encounter.
Maybe that wasn't the right mindset to have in a fight, but it seemed that I was nigh unkillable at the moment anyway, so I could forgive myself for not exactly seeing this in the most appropriate light.
Of course, then the Demon Lord did something I didn't expect.
"You know, what?" Micheal suddenly spoke up, his voice filled with irritation as he glared towards me. "No."
"No?" I asked lamely, not really getting what he meant.
"No." He confirmed. "I've worked far too hard to risk even a small amount of progress wasting time fighting you two idiots."
With that, the blue glow surrounded Micheal once again, flickering slightly, and his armoured form rose into the air.
"Where in the Hell are you going?" I yelled to the floating man.
Micheal scoffed.
"To do more important things than killing a nuisance," He sent a glare towards the knight, who shrugged. "and a lucky half-breed."
Micheal raised higher in the air.
"Nothing you do can stop Earth Bet from being saved. Even your delays are inconsequential. So try to fight me, I promise you will lose."
Then, in a bright flash of blue light, The dark armoured man zoomed away.
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Silence echoed throughout the street as the Knight and I just stood there, looking at the location where the Demon Lord just was.
"Don't worry about what he said." The Knight spoke towards me, his comparatively normal visor focused on me. "I've learned through experience that if Micheal is ranting, then he is on the verge of absolute rage."
"Well, um." I replied with grace. "Thank you, I guess?"
"You should be proud of yourself, boy!" The knight proclaimed joyously. "When you stopped his invasion the first time, you could hear him from the next Demon realm over. Of course that would only be the beginning."
"Wait, the beginning?" I asked.
"Of course! Now that you stopped him the first time, he is only going to try harder to actually drag this whole dimension into Hell. Which means that Its up to you, and me, to keep stopping him."
"No, no,no. You have this all wrong." I denied. Clearly this man, aside the necessary insanity from literally appearing from Hell, was insane to think I was actually a protaganist. "I was just the Right, absolutely normal kid in the right place. I am not some sort of guy who goes around looking to save people."
"Oh, then why are you here?"
I thought back to the exact reason I had went to that warehouse this morning, and immediately cringed.
"I… I was just curious." I admitted hesitantly, aware of how such a reason blew a hole in my argument.
I couldn't see his face behind the full plated helm, but I got the distinct impression of a smug grin.
"That doesn't mean anything." I hastily added. "An NPC is fully capable of getting into trouble because of curiosity."
"Yes, but who did Micheal try to trap and kill?"
I stayed silent at that, realizing that, as much as I hated it, he wasn't wrong.
"Look, I may be explaining this badly, but the way I see it, Micheal blames you, is going to try to kill you and set off a demonic invasion that will likely kill everyone you know. It makes sense to stop that, don't you think?"
"Yeah, I guess, but…"
"Look, I get it, you don't want to actually commit to fighting Demons, you probably thought of it as a 'might as well' kind of thing. Trust me, I was the same but You will feel different about it later on."
I stayed silent as I had no idea how to respond to that but deep thought.
"And don't think too hard about that Half-breed comment. Its probably a case of reverse possession rather than parentage anyway."
"What?"
"You see, based on how you regenerated from literal mortal wounds, I would guess that, instead of rejecting the energies of Hell like most organic beings, you must have won the genetic lottery and your body actually absorbs it. Then a minor demon must have tried to posses you, shredding your soul but then thanks to actually liking demon energy, your soul probably ate the demon back, using the soul bit of it as some sort of soul glue while your body subsisted on the energy."
I could do nothing but stare at the Knight, my mouth agape.
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 felt my shock and unnatural calm break.
I felt myself fill with RAGE
They needed to die.
It made a lot of sense actually. Too much sense.
"How do you know all this?" I asked.
"Oh, I've been rambling haven't I?" The Knight asked himself more than me. "I'm sorry. I'm just so excited to actually be out of Hell for the first time in millennia. You have no idea how many Oracles I have bribed in order to be prepared for this moment."
"Okay?"
"But hey, I'm here now, and definitely ready to help the only person that has given Micheal a pseudo-aneurysm in at least four years."
"I don't even know if you are human or not!"
"Well, I was about a millennia ago at least. I guess the answer would be… mostly?"
"Really?" I glared at him for such a vague answer.
"Hell changes you." The Knight shrugged. "But shouldn't you be more worried about her?"
He pointed past me. Turning around, I saw the collapsed form of Jessica, lying on the ground with blood slowly dripping from her nose. I felt my chest clench in worry as I ran over to her. Reaching her, I breathed out a sigh of relief to see that she was in fact breathing properly and seemingly in a peaceful sleep.
"Well, I guess her power must have overwhelmed her a bit. It does that when it comes to Thinkers."
"Thinkers?" I asked pointedly as I looked back behind me at the Knight.
"Look, I'm just going to go now, I don't have any money so in order to stay I'm probably going to have to loot a few gangers to get by. I'll… see you around."
"Just who the Hell are you anyway?" I yelled as he began walking away, his sword strapped to his back."
"The name is Ned!"
I watched at the Hell man named Ned walked down the dark street, eventually pinching my nose at, by far, the weirdest conversation I've ever had.
And I accidentally managed to get Sparky to give me an abridged version of the Birds and the Bees.
I let out a sigh as I resigned myself to be the one to take Jessica home, despite my blood-stained state of undress.
Hopefully, she has her address in her wallet…
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I honestly didn't enjoy writing this chapter. In everything I write, i normally go with a central theme to a certain scene. In the Earlier scenes, I went with more DOOM than Worm and it had a constant tone per chapter. This chapter had so much ground to cover (even in my original draft) that I didn't feel that tone while I was writing and thus I personally feel that it became a slog and there is probably an immense amount of inconsistencies that I couldn't find.
Then there was Micheal...
I want him to be a competent villain, I want him to actually be smart and practical enough in order to not fall into the villain tropes that people use to give exposition.
But I still need him to give exposition.
I still need Greg to actually survive this fight.
As Ned was originally going to appear here as a future pseudo mentor, I decided to actually get him, as an over excited man to not be in the worst place in the multiverse, to drop some expo bombs at a time where Greg doesn't actually care to think about it rather than Micheal revealing everything in a fight he thinks will be simple pest extermination
It probably reads terribly.
I will say that I will try my best to make the chapters flow better in the future now that all the expo dump and introductions have finished.
Probably a Micheal interlude next though.
I also hope that Greg ignoring a character dilemma is also written well enough to remain in character.
Then there was Micheal...
I want him to be a competent villain, I want him to actually be smart and practical enough in order to not fall into the villain tropes that people use to give exposition.
But I still need him to give exposition.
I still need Greg to actually survive this fight.
As Ned was originally going to appear here as a future pseudo mentor, I decided to actually get him, as an over excited man to not be in the worst place in the multiverse, to drop some expo bombs at a time where Greg doesn't actually care to think about it rather than Micheal revealing everything in a fight he thinks will be simple pest extermination
It probably reads terribly.
I will say that I will try my best to make the chapters flow better in the future now that all the expo dump and introductions have finished.
Probably a Micheal interlude next though.
I also hope that Greg ignoring a character dilemma is also written well enough to remain in character.
I sincerely hope that the writing was enjoyable.