Chương 25: chapter 25: The Lion, the Wolf and the Slayer
After the dust cleared up, and everyone saw who came, everything fell silent. Even the horde, previously screaming like the army of monsters it was, stopped not just making any sound, but also moving.
Which made sense. After all, it wasn't everyday Doom Slayer came to save someone's behind.
Both Pausanias and Ayame, still on the ground, stared up at the armored figure standing tall in the center of the crater and his back turned to them, the former in awe and wonder, the latter in terror and dread, but both with equally wide eyes. Ayame even gave a whimper of fear when he turned around to face them, not helped by them laying on the ground, and in turn making Slayer seem even larger than he already was.
Suddenly, two objects appeared out of thin air and right into Doom Slayer's grip. He then extended his arms towards them.
One, the one he held with his left hand, was a long, bulky weapon of some sort. Ayame had no idea what it was, but Pausanias did, and in fact he had seen it in action when Doom Slayer used it to a hijacked tank on its tracks; according to his father when he saw footage of the weapon, it was some kind of energy weapon.
The other was a simple chainsaw, with several sections of its blade covered in rust. Only, it wasn't your average logging tool, given the fact it was nearly half as big as the man himself (who in turn was over a foot taller than Pausanias), and had two horn-like metal protrusions at the base of the blade. That, and it had something on its blade that most chainsaws didn't have.
At least not those used to cut down trees, that is. And, upon closer inspection, Ayame realized that the rust on the blade... actually wasn't.
'Is that dried blood?' She thought with horror.
Pausanias, on the other hand, was still dumbfounded by the fact Doom Slayer of all people had come to their rescue, given that there must have been situations that required his attention in the rest of the world. As a matter of fact, he really didn't expect anyone to come to their aid.
And then a thought, a treacherous one, struck him when he realized that maybe, just maybe, Doom Slayer appearing was not coincidence: how exactly did he know? Did the know who and what Daizo really was? Did he let it happen?
The young man didn't realize he was clenching both fists as he stared at Slayer, his brow furrowing into a half-glare.
As this happened, the tribe overlooking them from the cliff saw that the ink creatures, for one reason or another, did not attempt to exploit the calm to attack the three as expected; as a matter of fact, they seemed to be scared. Had any of them looked at Daizo, they would have seen him terrified out of his wits. They didn't, however, astonished as they were.
Doom Slayer, after a couple of seconds, tossed the weapons to the pair just after they stood up: the rifle to Ayame, the chainsaw to Pausanias.
Ayame nearly fell over when she caught the gun; she was stronger than she looked, a given for humanoid yokai, but it still was a gun half as big as she was, and probably half as heavy. Her dismay only grew when she saw that the device was not only stupidly heavy and bulky, but also lacked anything that resembled an ironsight... and that without taking into account she knew jack about firing guns at all, much less blasters. Did he really expect her to know how to aim it, let alone use it?
Pausanias, however, had a much different reaction.
A few moments after his fingers gripped the chainsaw's handle (unlike Ayame, he had no problems catching the thing), Pausanias began to feel fresher, angrier even. He didn't heal or anything, he just stopped feeling pain, which given everything should have made him wary.
It instead allowed him to remember what Daizo had told them, what he had planned to do to the tribe, the fact he nearly killed him and Ayame, and the fact that Doom Slayer had, for some reason or another, let it all happen.
He was furious, so much that the possibility of Slayer having not realized about them didn't occur to his adrenaline-rushing mind.
One of the ink monsters, a goblin, chose that moment to attack, charging at Pausanias shrieking and with its knife raised high.
The son of Hephaestus merely glared at the approaching creature, signaling Ayame to not intervene, and just as the goblin lunged at him, Pausanias swung the saw at it, bisecting it vertically. However, instead of oozing ink, the serrated blade actually cut something that could be called black gore, just like the one left by the grenade.
As they fell back to the grass, the 'solidifed' innards didn't recombine, or liquidify, or anything. They just... stayed dead, for lack of a better word.
This also made the entire horde, and their creator, to recoil back in what unmistakably had to be fear.
Pausanias stared at the remains of the creature, then at the blade, and finally at the Slayer, his anger at him momentarily forgotten after seeing that he now had a way to actually kill the monsters.
Both exchanged knowing looks and nodded, before Pausanias revved the chainsaw and charged at the horde and Slayer walked towards Daizo, leaving a startled Ayame fumbling with her improptu weapon.
..........
As I suspected, John's hasty enchantments hadn't been needed: the plasma gun's bolts were hot enough that the ink forming Daizo's creatures simply vaporized, essentially killing them by accelerated evaporation. The fact she didn't know how to handle firearms wasn't really an issue, given the gun's sheer rate of fire and relative little recoil. Plus, soon she realized it wouldn't slow her down by much.
On the other hand, the ink freaks struck with the chainsaw, due to the girl's inherent power that my weapons (plasma gun included, even though it really wasn't necessary in this case) shared with me, entered a stage of pseudo-solidification that prevented them to recompose, which was very bad for them given that said state was due to, well, a fucking chainsaw.
Or, in layman's terms, they became real 'boys' for a moment before being brutally sawed apart, or blown in case of the grenade.
Unfortunately, giving the chainsaw to the man, called Pausanias. had the unexpected side effect of making his levels of adrenaline rise to their limit due to a placebo effect which, given the situation, turned him into a berserker... or rather, a pseudo-berserker: he was pissed, but still had enough sense to not attack the girl, Ayame. Nonetheless, that anger of his ended up being a minor annoyance for me a few minutes later.
Now that both of them were more than capable of dealing with the ink constructs, I decided to focus on Daizo. Sadly, I didn't want to kill him, not yet, becase I needed to know why did he attack them (remember, I'm omnipresent to a point, not omniscient), and what else had he done, even though I had an idead that ended up being quite close to the truth.
Didn't stop me from ripping him piece by piece several times when he became a giant ink monster to save his sorry hide.
And no, I don't mean the induced pain he got every time I tore his monsters apart.
..........
Uehara Daizo, commander of the National Police Agency and famous across the archipelago for stopping several dangerous villains that he himself had created, began the day believing that the final stage his plan to get a promotion was secure: follow the truck carrying the wolf tribe, stop them in a low-transit highway so that there wouldn't be any witnesses, kill them, and then telling the boss an outrageous story about how he finally caught and killed the man-eaters. Sure, the driver turned out to be a superpowered guy, but that only delayed the inevitable.
Then things took an unexpected turn for the worse. Much, much worse.
At that moment, Uehara watched as the new arrival, and most likely the cause of the explosion that nearly blew him apart, turned around to face Antonios and his yokai girlfriend, his face betraying no emotion as the man made a gun and a chainsaw of all things appear out of nowhere and gave them to the couple.
In truth, he was scared shitless, and not just because his plans had been foiled for the first time since ever, but also because of who had done so.
'Do something already, you big metal prick!'
The goddamned Doom Slayer, aka the superhero he really DIDN'T want to ever come to Nippon for any reason. He didn't want Superman to come either, but the Boy Scout lacked the... whatever Doom Slayer used to teleport around, and very possibly see things that should have not been seen.
And unlike Superman, or any other famous superhero for that matter, Doom Slayer was more than willing to kill his enemies. Just ask those Red Pitchfork nutters or that parasite from Spain. Apparently he killed only when the victims themselves did something unforgivable.
Like, for example, murdering several dozen people and then accusing an entire group of yokai of doing the deed just to become superintendent, something that most definitely warranted the death penalty in most of the world. None of that, however, held a candle to everything he had done for four centuries, not even faking those villains and the deaths they caused. Or the hundreds of murders he committed since becoming a monster for that matter.
For the first time since he became the monster he was today four hundred years ago, Uehara realized he could be dead in the next five minutes.
Then, something (he didn't know what) compelled one of his semi-independent monsters to attack Aleksandros... only to be cut in half by the chainsaw. From top to bottom.
'What the hell?!' Uehara thought as he stepped back in fear and clutched his chest, feeling as if HE had been the one cut in half. This also caused not just one or two, but all his ink creatures to imitate him.
Many other monsters attacked, but Antonios, swinging a revved chainsaw around as if possessed by an onryo, killed them just as quickly as the first one. Each creature killed made Uehara hiss in pain, again feeling as if he was the one being cut to ribbons. Worse still, the girl began firing the gun Slayer gave her, and while her aim left much to be desired at first, eventually she got an idea of how to use it, and even remembered she was faster than a cheetah, adding further to the carnage.
And then the Doom Slayer decided to kill some himself as he made his way to the commander.
Something that, of course, meant that the pain soon became agony, because they were actually killing the ink constructs... and by extension, hurting (though not really weakening) him. The explosion from before, but those had been just a few inklings unfortunate enough to be close, and they died so quickly he didn't really feel it, not five of them every ten seconds! He had never fought someone who could actually hurt him!
'How?! How can they do that?!'
Then the green bastard, instead of helping the greek guy and the yokai kill his monsters as he hoped, kept moving towards him, only this time he began to run. Uehara promptly made half of the army ignore the girl and Aleksandros and go straight for Slayer, and began spewing more and more ink, but even then it became obvious this was delaying the inevitable.
He couldn't get out of this one talking and twisting words, not with Doom Slayer, who despite the increasingly stiffer resistance from dragons, giants and demons didn't stop his march, his visor showed a glare that could have killed him had it been possible.
Uehara had to fight, and pray he could do better than a shark demigod.
And the only hope he had to at least offer some resistance was to unleash his most powerful form, the one he was reluctant to use because it took too much energy from him to form.
But anything just to keep living, at least for a few minutes.
'He wants to kill me? Fine! But I'm not dying without a fight!' Uehara thought as Doom Slayer was mere feet away from him before tearing his shirt open, grabbing his chest... and ripping it out.
..........
'I think I'm getting the hang of this!' Ayame thought as she raced around the monsters, filling them with blue orbs of energy as she went, and relieved that she now could fight back against the monsters. The weapon was heavy, yes, but as she found out to her relief, not so much as to make her that much slower than usual.
Which still left her much faster than any of the monsters, which allowed her to develop a simple yet extremely effective tactic: run circles around them, force them into groups, unleash hell until they turned into vapour, rinse and repeat.
Pausanias, on the other hand, kept going at the horde without abandon, his body now partially covered in black blood and flesh from his victims. He didn't even need to keep the chainsaw running, he was more than strong enough to just cleave anything on his path. She was understandably worried that he ended up attacking her by accident, but at the same time was confident he wouldn't recognize her, which she doubted given he was simply very angry.
'And even then, I can just get out of his way' She thought as she liquidated a group of skeletons under the cheers of her tribe.
And then, of course, was the man who had basically saved them, Doom Slayer, of whom she was now significantly less scared after he helped them. She didn't care what Doom Slayer was going to do to that bastard (torture him, beat the hell out of him, kill him outright) as long as it made him suffer for what he did, but she did know that it would hurt.
Ayame, after getting rid of yet more monsters, watched in trepidation as the future soldier closed the distance between him and the commander, but just as he was about to reach him, Daizo did something that shocked her at first.
First, he grabbed his shirt and ripped it open. Ayame would have laughed at his action had it not been for Daizo immediatly grabbing his belly and, to her horror, ripping it out. Only, instead of spewing out blood and guts, the newly made hole on his body disgorged a torrent of ink that engulfed a smiling Daizo completely, but didn't stop at that.
As the ink kept flowing in front of Slayer, Ayame watched with terror how the mound kept growing in size, developing something that could be described as forelimbs, growing a strange, smaller mound at the top... All while Doom Slayer did nothing, seemingly inspecting it with interest.
And then a large mass eerily similar to a fist, larger than a car, sprouted from the growing mass and struck Doom Slayer with enough force to send him flying backwards into the treeline. Said fist then placed itself on the ground just as the rest of the arm began to came out, followed by another arm.
As the amorphous mass began forming into the shape of a man, Ayame's eyes widened in dread as the creature kept growing, and growing, and growing some more, until it finally stopped after reaching the height of a small skyscraper.
Daizo, who looked like a normal human a mere minute before, was now a towering giant made of ink, dark as the night sky and several times larger than even the largest ink demon, a eerie red haze glowing from both its eyes and the inside of its mouth. Overall, it looked like a demon had crawled it's way out of Hell itself.
Pausanias stopped his rampage to gawk at the titan raising over them like a spire of death, and even the other ink monsters stopped fighting to stare at their master. Ayame could also hear screams of panic and terror from where her family was located.
"Didn't expect that, did you, you green bastard?!" Daizo bellowed as he glared at the spot where Doom Slayer crashed, his roar shaking the very ground where the stood and deafening Ayame's, hurting her hearing to the point of making her cry in pain and drop the gun to clutch at her ears.
Whatever else he was going to do (keep talking, attack them, anything) was suddenly interrupted when a green missile crashed into its chest at breakneck speed.
..........
Welp, Doom Slayer finally joins the fray, but so has Daizo, and this might be the first somewhat serious fight he's been since his arrival at DC. Does Pausanias becoming a killing machine just because a placebo and in spite of his injuries make sense to you guys? Could the placebo work at all given the universe and his own background?
If the fight scenes seem to be crappy and vaguely described, consider this:
A) As stated in Daizo's POV, it's the first time since ever someone managed to actually hurt him in any way.
B) Both Pausania and Ayame are actually good fighters themselves (though Pausanias is the better of the two), but had no real way of fighting Daizo's army.
C) Doom Slayer fighting some ink mooks. That is all.
As for Daizo's rather weird train of thought in the second half (first scared, then deciding to fight), he's been driven half-mad: unlike other villains, he knows to not understimate enemies that seem capable of dealing with him, and obviously knows of Doom Slayer's opinion towards villains like him.
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