Dressed in a never worn before prison outfit, Kitsune's gift to me having finally been beyond repair after my fight with extinction, as well as a cheap plastic bear mask, I ride into town atop Yogi, with ten more bears following behind me.
Call me the bear master, for I am master of all bears! Muahahaha!
Ok, turns out I might have underestimated exactly how long it would take a group of bears to make their way back to whatever the village was called, I already forgot.
Boring information tends to slip my mind sometimes.
Still, I do eventually make it to the village.
A few people spot me approaching but instead of making the assumption that I'm a villain or just generally being afraid of a raid of bears, they just stare in confusion, or take out their phones to record us.
I choose to ignore them, but it's not like my bears are house trained and I have kind of been killing everything I've come across since they've been following me.
So it doesn't really come as too much of a surprise to me when one of them breaks off from the group and starts running at some guy.
Not a minute later and a pair of police cars pull up on the road ahead of me alongside a PRT van.
Three police officers climb out alongside four PRT troopers and I'm pretty sure that this is actually the extent of the local law enforcement, with the exception of Wrangler who I assume is on the way.
One of the police guys, probably the sheriff going by the badge, pulls out a megaphone.
"Uhh, Miss Bear Whisperer? Could you uhh, get of your bear and send them back to the forest please? They are wild animals and they could hurt someone."
No shit. Who gathers bears without the intention of forming a mini army? What else am I going to do with them?
I guess they are really fluffy to be fair, I could totally see myself keeping one as a pet if I ever get a house or something. Though I'd want a bigger bear, like a Kodiak.
"No! Give me your wallets!" I almost choke on my words by laughing at how ridiculous the scene is, but I manage to keep proper bear riding form.
The sheriff puts the speaker down and turns to one of his deputies and says something that my limited mouth reading skills were easily able to identify as 'What the fuck?'
"Uhh, are you a Villain, Miss? In that case I would ask that you uhh, dismount the bear and come with us down to the station please?"
Man, this guy needs to speak with more confidence.
Right as I am about to respond however, I am interrupted by the galloping of a horse of all things and I look over to see a man in a full cowboy outfit, from the hat all the way down the the boots with weird spike wheel things on the heels.
He is only using a bandana to cover his face and he has one of those cowboy jackets that have strips dangling all over them for some reason.
I wonder if he already knew how to ride a horse or if it's something he picked up to fit his theme?
Behind him is James, the bear that broke off earlier, being dragged by the horse while his, her? I don't know how to tell the difference, limbs are all tied together by a glowing lasso.
If that really is all his power can do, making a lasso, then I am going to be really disappointed.
"Howdy Pardner, this here bear wouldn't happen to be one o' your posse, would she Lassie?" Holy Jesus he really is dedicated to the theme.
As Wrangler's statement echoes down the street and I can't help myself, I laugh in his face.
"Hahahahahahahaha!" With one hand pointing at him and the other holding my stomach, I laugh so hard that I fall off of Yogi and continue to point and laugh at him, "hahahahahahahaha!"
Everyone, including the bears, sort of just stand around awkwardly and wait for me to laugh myself out, which takes a few minutes.
He just looks so silly!
Eventually I do manage to pull myself together enough to get back on my feet, only sniggering a little bit.
"R-right. Well, will you please send the bears back now? I'm sure we can talk all this through back at the station." The sheriff's reiterated request falls on deaf ears.
Instead of listening to him, I turn to my bears to look each of them in the eye, then I turn back to the lawmen in front of me and raise one of my arms high before swinging it down with a shout.
"Attack!!"
...Nothing happens.
Silence reigns over the street, only broken by the sound of camera's snapping a picture every now and then in the audience.
Why is nothing happening?
Oh. Right.
Bears.
They can't understand me.
How did I forget about that?
"Was something supposed to happen lady?" Cowboy man asks, annoying me.
In response to him, I grab Winnie from my right by the arm and spin around like I'm doing a hammer throw except with a bear instead of a ball and chain.
Like that, I throw a bear at Wrangler, surprising everyone. Especially Winnie, poor girl, or boy, didn't see it coming.
Cowboy man jumps off his horse in time to dodge but the horse is a lot less lucky and is swiftly crushed under 400lbs of pure muscle and fluffiness crashing into it at the speed of a car.
the horse is definitely dead on impact, but I ignore that in favour of turning to the bears. Clearly they don't understand words, so instead I just glare at them and allow my semi-natural predator instinct to kill wash over them, instilling them with my own bloodlust.
"𝘒𝘪𝘭𝘭."
That works as intended and each of them starts roaring and making other less onomatopoeic noises.
One of the James' even tries to attack me, but I just bitch slap them and they move on.
Pretty soon, the bears are spread all around me either attacking people or causing property damage at a not very substantial pace.
One of the bears is quickly encased in yellow orange containment foam, soon followed by another before I think they just run out.
I mean, expecting a village in the middle of nowhere like this to be well stocked was kind of a stupid idea anyway.
Also it turns out that Billy the Kid's power actually is just the manifestation of a line of rope. He might have some measure of telekinetic control over it, but frankly the control is obviously incredibly lacking if I'm not even too sure if it exists or not.
Now, while I'd like to say that the street is in pandemonium, that's just not really true. The bears are sort of just scattering around at a pretty slow pace for the most part, ripping signs out of the ground and shit.
The police and PRT clearly heard about the bears before getting here too, because they all have tranquilliser guns. It's only been a few minutes and I'm already down to half as many bears.
However that is when things suddenly change once again.
From down the street comes a family sized RV, honestly looking more like a bus than anything, with a fairly large trailer being pulled along behind it that by itself is about the size of a van.
The motorhome pulls up on the street, turning to be almost perpendicular to the street about a dozen feet away from us, attracting the attention of everyone present, including the bears thanks to the noise of the engine.
But the next instant, the street falls to silence as the back of the trailer opens up and a familiar face, for all that it can be called a face, climbs out that I recognise from seeing him on TV.
The monster that reveals itself could be best described as a combination of the best traits from a bear and a panther, though he is unfortunately lacking the fluffy ears of my bears.
Its entire body is black and iridescent, with armour plates covering the majority of the body and scales in places where flexibility is needed, like the joints while it has spines and bristling hair everywhere else.
Its mouth is filled with mismatched fangs dripping with acidic saliva. A hundred solid-black eyes run along the entire length of its body, set into the plates of its armour.
It has six legs, each one a hulking monstrosity ending in a massive set of claws while forking at the knee or elbow joint.
Its four back limbs each fork into scimitar-like claws, with multiple smaller sets of tentacles accompanying them while its two front limbs have sets of long-fingered hands instead of the tentacles.
Ah. Hello Crawler, welcome to the party.
Well this certainly complicates things somewhat.
The Nine are here.
Haha, I'm in danger.
My fading smile returns in full force at the thought.
Crawler starts stretching himself for a moment before his many eyes lock onto each person and bear in the street and he pauses, his monstrous head tilting in confusion at the scene before him.
Meanwhile, nobody says a single word, frozen in either shock or fear as they stare at the RV door, watching with bated breathes as it is opened to allow a little girl to come bounding out.
She is wearing a blue dress underneath a white apron, both of which are unkempt and covered with dirt and dried blood. Her hair is tied up in ringlets and looking well cared for in contrast to her clothes.
I also notice that she has heterochromia, one eye being blue and the other green.
Once her feet touch the ground, she immediately starts running around like a normal, energetic child while being either chased or followed by a few small spider-like robots.
That would be Bonesaw then.
Quickly following her, is a black and white striped woman, like a zebra, with even her hair matching her body's colours. She is also completely naked for some reason, not that I'm going to complain about the view.
That reminds me of my first night out, when those guys were talking about fetishizing her and honestly I can see where that guy was coming from now, Siberian is hot.
Her glowing yellow eyes only briefly glance at the strange scene on the street before she turns to follow after the little girl as if she's some kind of exasperated parent or something.
The next freakshow to leave the RV is Hatchet Face. A man that looks like he's cosplaying Frankenstein's monster with all the scars and fucked up face. When he gets a couple of steps away from the RV and takes in the scene of the street, I watch as his brain seems to short circuit.
I even see him mouth out a silent 'The fuck?' before I turn to focus back on the door as another weirdo comes out.
This one looks like some kind of mannequin, which makes his cape name incredibly unimaginative, with his hunched over body standing at at least nine foot tall of pure white ceramic looking material.
The joints have all been replaced by chains that connect each of his separated body parts and it is all completely smooth, even the face has no eyeholes or anything, looking like a smooth egg.
After Mannequin comes someone that actually kind of pisses me off a little bit to see.
It's a fat, pear shaped dude dressed up as a clown and from what I remember seeing on TV about the Nine, he can't even speak and can only make a creepy laughing sound.
But the part that pisses me off a little is that he's dressed up as a clown and yet he's happily with these losers. I've always felt that the Nine are a tacky bunch with no class and the simple idea that one of 𝘮𝘺 Clowns would be so tacky annoys me.
Granted, he isn't one of mine, but he's ruining the brand image just by virtue of existing.
Guess he'll have to die then.
The next two to come out do so as a pair. A man and a woman, one significantly more important than the other.
The woman is Shatterbird, capable of singlehandedly disabling an entire city by shattering literally everything silicon based with a single scream. She's wearing a flowing dress covered in glass while wearing a bird beak to cover her head that is also made of glass.
It honestly does actually look kind of cool.
The man however clearly doesn't feel the same need for a cool costume as he is just dressed in a white button up shirt and black slacks that have a dozen blades tucked into the belt. His clothes are also decorated with dried blood, but without the dirt that Bonesaw's dress has.
He is actually a pretty handsome looking guy, with a neatly trimmed goatee and a strong widow's peak to match a naturally attractive face. He kind of looks like a movie star.
He casts a quick glance about the street before locking eyes with me and raising a brow, gaining an amused yet curious look to his face.
Jack Slash. Leader of the Slaughterhouse Nine since he was like, twelve or something. The single most infamous serial killer on the planet, infamous for spending a bit over two decades running around North America with his band of psychopaths and murdering and torturing everyone he sees.
The Nine's collective death count is probably somewhere around a hundred thousand at this point, unless I'm exaggerating. I don't exactly have an exact number, but they have been going around killing people since long before I was born.
And in all that time, only Jack has managed to survive the pursuit of heroes and other vengeful parahumans.
Well, if anything I can at least say I was right earlier.
Today is certainly turning out to be an interesting one.
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A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!
Fun fact, when I started my last fic it was with a single thought. "I want a fic with more ANBU spy stuff." Everything else just came about from making it up as I go along. For this fic, the only plans I had going in was "I want a ghoul in Worm... I also wanna see them interact with the nine." So this is like, the whole point of this fic lmao, and it's just going to be a middle of the story arc :(
Ah well, with the nine there is so much insanity and I am looking forward to writing it lol XD
Oh and it should be obvious, but Lusia has so far been chaotic neutral with hints of good, so now it's time for the chaotic evil to balance things out a little lol. A lot of people are probably going to die rather humorous/ excruciatingly painful deaths from now on ;P
tbh it's actually a good thing that I was feeling hesitant about doing messed up stuff that the nine will be doing because it means that I will be slowly getting corrupted into writing more messed up stuff and I feel like that will translate really well in showing how Lusia herself is going even further off the deep end.
(5+)Advanced chapters with the links below!
pat/reon.com/user?u=41732867 (get rid of the first slash or check the description)
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