digimonprotectors - Tumblr blog

digimonprotectors · 4 years ago

Text

Unforeseen Consequences (CH.1)

The rain poured down on the streets of Nerima Japan, every few seconds a red cherry at the end of my cigarette burned orange to give my later than five o'clock shadow a sharp blood mandarine hue as I walked into the uncertainty of my future. My hands were only a little cold behind the charcoal black rough leather gloves as it drew away the dart to exhale the cloud of cancerous smoke, it trailed into the air in a haze until it disappeared among the gray skies above me thinking on the day's events. The wind was strong at my back as the clocks ticked over to five in the morning. A long night overdue to be over, my ride skipping out to go drinking with the rest of my cohorts, a mixed blessing to collect my thoughts. I needed to think about the meeting and how I should either salvage it or just get my plane ticket ready to go back to Seattle. The name's Archer. That's really all you need. I was on government business in Japan. A notable but low-key conference of those who work on the darker side of the gray lines of work wetter than the rain pouring down on me at the time. I've been to lots of places in the world, strange and dangerous all around. Places you wouldn't like. No one would in their right mind for that matter. Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Columbia, Sudan, Sierra Leone to name far more than I should. I had lived on and off in Japan but I was actually born on a military base just outside of Toyko. Navy brat somehow turned Army degenerate and then...well it gets classified after that. For the sake of your curiosity, the business I was on had to do with a special project. Nothing involving aliens before you start getting too far out in tinfoil hat land, just a joint effort between NATO nations. Due to the growing popularity of global terrorism, there was a push to put together some combined force, spearheaded by Japan of all places. They were looking to lift some restrictions on their constitution with US approval, we were looking for more joint training and deployment points in the area. I was just here as an advisor, translator and possibly one in the chain of command of this little outfit. We were stuck on names while we organized our candidates, I put forward Specialized Tactical Anti-Terrorist Interception Command, otherwise known as STATIC Force. When you got two shiny new silver Captain bars on your shoulder it's amazing what ends up getting jotted down on the drawing board. The rain was starting to die off as I reflected on the meeting. Not often did much get done when you got three different chains of command from five different countries trying to hash out who foots what bill let alone who is going to do what. The droplets pattered lighter and lighter on my head as I saw the clouds thinning out above me. I pulled off my hood to get a good cold breeze going across my scruffy chin and running my hand through my long on top hair to brush out a few bangs in my field of vision. The sides were still cut down to the quick to keep in regulation with the barrette I had to sport around though so it looked a little off. Making my way across the middle of the street, just about to drag off the last of my smoke I heard a crackling in my ear of the world around me suddenly changing for the stranger. I had a low-profile earpiece headset on, connected to my cellphone in my pocket that began to make some weird high-pitched whistling noise. Sounds like long draw 'tweeeees' winding up before dropping along with what I could only decipher as digital information downloading feedback. The street lights around me started to flicker, my watch's display flashed and randomized numbers. Electrical interfeirance? From what? Looking down the street to my left I saw building lights flash in random patterns, traffic lights flick from stop, slow and go at random. When I looked up the sky stopped me in mid-step. Above me was not the normal stary sky that I expected as the clouds parted. It looked foreign, bands of what looked like stretches of barcodes mixed with DNA sequences unraveled along the sky. The backdrop to it looked to the striking similarities of the Northern Lights except far more detail and coated the whole sky with faint greens and bright blues. I craned my kneck up I could have sworn I made out what looked like continents, oceans, and even city lights on a world I couldn't be seeing right above me. My cigarette drooped from my lips, fell from it, and made its way down to the wet street below me. The second set of lights came from my right, my eyes darting over after a second. Headlights? Horn sounded. Speeding truck. I'm dead. I then was struck but not by the vehicle barreling down at me to my painful surprise. Instead, a flash of robes out of the corner of my eye picked me up in a tackle at full sprinting speed into a bone-straining hit. Ripped off the ground, my cigarette fell to the pavement as we sailed back towards the sidewalk. I felt my chest almost cave in before my back hit the cement with a slam and a skid up and over the lip of the sidewalk. The only reason I didn't feel the snap of my spine was my concealed kevlar armor under my jacket and shirt that deadened the blow. Hurt like hell as I rolled over backward three times, slamming my head off a brick wall. My brian jostled in my head, my arms coming up gripping my scraped up scalp. and I slumped to the side with my vision twisting for a few moments. I heard my cigarette hiss out in a puddle. Curled on the ground I heard another voice giving a slight groan, pulling my knees in as I drew my hand back to see if there was any blood. Yup, blood. I shook my head as i barely missed a concussion, realizing I had flown from the middle of the street at the centerline all the way back to the corner of the sidewalk. The low wall with a barred spiked fence around it symbolically guarding a large residential building, Highenview Terrance in fact as I read from the sign. I looked around to see who had saved my life so suddenly. He was even stranger than the sky was. I thought he was wearing a very baggy tan trench coat but he was actually wearing some type of monk's robes. It was pretty basic but it has some prestige about it, nicely sewn darker tan trimmings, a solid leather belt around the middle, and some weird rappings around his hands like fight raps. Short brown hair, almost spiked but he had a very long braided ponytail down his back. Around his neck looked like a religious symbol, more like a seal of some kind with the crosses and a shield and really weird-looking symbols looked halfway between Kanji and random computer symbols. He looked in his mid thirties, younger thirties for sure, fair complexion and almost impossibly clean-shaven. On his back was something I was a little more concerned with, a very large scabbard for what looked like a massive broadsword. Medieval in nature, a cleaver of men if you will and that just made it all the more confusing. The robed man stood up to his feet as I got to my knees, squinting through the moderate pain. "Are you hurt?" He asked leaning towards me. I shook my head as I got up using the fence to get fully up to my feet. I brushed myself off of the grime and water as the truck that nearly hit me sped down the road. Must have panicked and gunned it to avoid my foot up his ass if he got out. "You must get off the streets it isn't safe!" He pointed away. "Nowhere is ever safe." I answered with a shrug, "Thought my number was up with that truck. What's with the getup?" He looked confused at my statement. Narrowly avoiding death and not one side of panic he was probably thinking was a little bit strange. Been nearly killed a few times, this one was just a little more surprising and in the soonest retrospect very anti-climatic. I reached for my pack and flicked another cigarette out, I was still expecting an answer. "You know swords aren't legal to carry around here." I said well aware of the hypocrisy of what I had under my tactical jacket, 'Didn't think Japan had HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) with European leanings but---' "Don't you understand you need to get out of here!" He insisted finally, "I'm trying to---." "Run away Gennai?" A smooth voice called out from the end of the street, "Time to stop running now." I looked over just a block away, walking towards us seemed to be photo negative of the man I was speaking to, but that smile on his face was enough to make my senses start to sharpen up to a fight. The robes he wore were almost the same as the man called Gennai's, except they were black with gray trimmings. They were torn and faded at the cuffs, collar, and bottoms worn by time but it looked almost intentional. I would have thought they were twins but the flesh on his face was a pale gray and his hair a solid white sheen against the street lights. What pierced me were his eyes. Blood red. The smile was sinister as he walked all on his own but with every step he took the ground started to form a thick soupy fog that stretched out behind him like a misty cloak, stretching out further and further as he walked. "Who's your friend?" He pointed at me, "Seems a bit old to be someone you might need." "He has nothing to do with me Railius!" Gennai countered. The guy laughed with a twinge of madness as I started to slip myself into a defensive posture, hand slowly reaching behind my back. Instincts started to kick on as that dark eather that formed along the street started to take human-like shapes. My mind was trying to process all of this insanity but training was overriding the crazy for practicality. My hand slipped around the hilt of my belt knife. "He's next to you and that's enough." Railius answered, "And you're not going to risk your mission to defend him now are you?" I didn't answer the threat as those forms started to shift up like pulling themselves out of a tar-like substance, the smokey cloud beginning to peel away to reveal similarly dressed beings, only they had hoods and tight-rapped masks around their faces. The eyes I still saw, glowing and looking right at me with a murderous intent I knew well. Gennai stepped in front of me, reaching behind his back and drawing out that monstrous blade out in one pull. The silver steel flashed out as the sky's cleared and the lights returned to just flickering in and out. "I'll hold him off!" Gennai looked back over his shoulder, "Run you fool!" I was not going to take a fight like this and I couldn't run anyway now trapped on the street corner surrounded. I had anticipated maybe a mugging or an ambitious kidnapping maybe but all of my equipment was under my poncho. The knives they had looked like they were made to gut crocodiles. Halfway between a kitchen knife crossed with a cleaver, the end was shaped like a fishhook complete with barbs. The pummels had spikes on the end too. Nasty but they probably got the job done like they were looking to do to me and this Gennai guy. My heart rate was through the roof now, veins on my neck throbbing but I kept composure. The tan monk stood with his sword out, ready to defend a not so defenseless stranger as he thought. They quickly circled around us, my avenue of escape not there yet. I looked around for a path out, fences and walls in my way for the moment but nothing I couldn't vault over. "I'll go right and draw them away." Gennai turned back, "I'm sorry for this." "Don't be." I spoke simply, "Wrong place to be tonight." Gennai glanced back at that, again confusion crossing his gaze. "You're not afraid?" He asked, "How?" "Death comes for all of us." I answered as two of the dozen were working out who would lead first on me, "Its only a matter of how and time." "Enough of this kill Gennai!" Railius ordered with a point of his longer version of their blades. Gennai bolted right like a blur of fabric and flashing steel, ten of them chased after. Railus pursued with a casual stride while the others like hungry jackles after a meal. A battle cry followed those that pursued, long howling cries of rage echoing through the streets as they vanished after him. Railus walked calmly up the street after them in no hurry, metal boots clanking away as he ran his thumb up his twisted sword. The two remaining circled around me, closing the gap with their blades above their heads, dancing their steps side to side in joyful anticipation to sink them into me. I heard them chuckling like hyenas, Railus looking over at me for a moment in the middle of the street. He too was curious since my expression had not changed. "Human...you fear nothing?" He asked almost offended, "No begging? No bargaining? Not a word of why?" I didn't answer. What was I going to say really? I was glancing between him and his two remaining creatures of my now real nightmares closing in, keeping tabs with every one of their steps. What I returned to him was a glare, he stopped mid-pace. A laser gaze right into his narrowed and even a little bit of anger was burning away into him. Railius didn't respond well to it, insult bled across his demeanor. "Kill him." He dragged the emphasis out on the words, "I don't want things like him running around." I drew a sneer up my face as he continued now at a faster pace, wanting to catch up on his own prey. The blood-red eyes looked away finally and I looked to the two still twenty feet out and orbiting me. A slight wind kicked up as my feet settled on the ground, weight shifting side to side as my breath drew hard in and out. Adrenaline was making my face tingle a bit, fingers twitch and the ones on the knife flex harder into the rubber handle. I looked towards my two attackers and they both halted in place with my expression alone. "A warning." I spoke finally with a raised finger, "I haven't begged for my life yet. It's because I don't fear losing it. How about you?" "Death is here now." One spoke back in a bark. "Embrace it." The other offered gleefully. I scoffed at the notion. "Come and get it." My attackers stood, perking upright with surprise by the statement, looking between themselves bewildered. They must have been used to fear being the primary reaction, or at least the outwards appearance of it and finding none with me. They charged nonetheless, one in front of the other in a lunging sprint, knives poised to sink into me when they got that close. I wasn't going to let them. Firing off like a bullet, my cigarette snapped from my finger in a flick and shot right into the leading physical apparition's face. In reality, all was a blur but the distinct strike of the searing ember crashed right into his eye socket burst into a spattering of burning tobacco. My knife flashed out, the morning fresh wet stone-sharpened blade slicing through my poncho all the way down with ease as I flashed forward as the attacker flinched. I ducked under his blind slash and my edge severed right through the mask around his face, his neck and split all of it open. My feet twisted, knife flipping into an underhand hold and in one rip I hauled my sliced rain protection off and tossed it into the second-standing attacker. The instant batting away of the rubber liner came as I knew it would but it used both arms to do it. Both ends of the blade clear of my attack trajectory, I lept forward and with a sick crunch through the ribcage, the bottom of my fist dug right into where I hoped his heart was. That moment of silence, the first opponent hitting the ground in a roll, my fist twisted over with distinct poping crackles as it did. Its eyes with their black pupils quivering over in the direction of my own look of indifference as I ripped the blade out. My adversary choked a yelp, my boot rose up under my knee and I delivered a door-busting kick right where I stabbed. My impact felt like I was hitting a dense sandbag but it still lurched back, wobbled down to the ground clawing at its chest. The stuck one babbled weak incoherent nonsense, writhing like it was on a hot plate on the ground. I pulled down the zipper on my jacket and with a smooth pull out came my service pistol from my shoulder holster. It snapped in the direction of the formed being as it gripped its throat with one clawed hand holding tight. The shadowed being looked into my eyes from behind the barrel. "Embraced this." I spat back its words. The gunshot rang out as I squeezed the trigger, two more after that to be sure. The slashed one crumpled down but instead of the familiar pink mist from the exit, the hit caused a spark of embers, his ash-coloured flesh cracking with bright fractures of bright blacklight purple. His head shattered with a single hole after the third and his head cracked open in a fire burst of orange like a sledgehammer to a glass skull. A neon purple smoke and fire surged out from his neck, the rest of his body, armor and cloth obliterated itself before my eyes. The remnant chunks churned away in a twirling vortex and into oblivion in a few seconds along with an invisible wind. I took my hand away from my eyes as the heat singed me, blinking slowly to what I just saw. 'What the hell just happened?' I asked. A growl came from behind me, my head whipping around along with my pistol aimed. The stuck one was getting up slowly, the same black-lit glow throbbing from his chest. It was radiating into itself, shrinking and snuffing out leaving only a single line of puncture and a mangled scar! 'It not over yet human!' It screamed at me running. I instinctively fired, each round of mine punching a set of holes you could fit under a playing card into his chest but it wasn't doing a damn thing! Out the back I caught the black dust flying out where his spine was and I worked my way up to get to his head. A heartbeat before he got into blade's reach, I swapped grip on my blade and clanged a strike off the incoming knife, parrying and slashing down the bend of his arm. It barely affected him despite I should have cut through his arm clean at the elbow, a limp but whiping flail of an aimed cut missed. His arm snapped back into place but my boot crunching his knee with a rippling crackle buckling his leg. He jabbed and swung hard, my blade parrying the strike off. I shot more rounds into his back, going for the head but he flinched out of the way until the slide action on my gun stayed back telling me I was dry. I flipped my gun in my hand to be a stubby club for the second, and cracked it off his face sending him staggering. No time or hands to get a reload as I saw him wobble back up, breathing heavy with glowing cracks all over his body. It paced around me, I mirrored his distance. Ten of fifteen in him and all center mass and he was still functioning with no worse for wear now with a robe looking closer to a cheese grater than clothing. "What the fuck are you?!" I demanded. "Darkness and will given meaning!" He answered as his knee cracked back into place, "Now your demise in physical form!" He twirled his blade around trying to fancy me into a mistake, I flicked my blade and parried it off and cross slash flurried him right back. He wasn't concerned for his well being, taking the hits with his forearms and even his chest at times. I carved him up every chance I found, he didn't care. I got in an upper swing of my pistol butt under his chin, spun on the spot and snapped a spin kick right to his face. My foot hit with all the intention of taking his head off but it was like hitting a wooden post, my momentum ending in that second. I landed, my feet scooted me back in a defensive stance, his face having small fissures of glowing purple on his face slowly shrinking away. He was slowing down the more I hurt him at least. I spat off onto the ground, he was getting more frustrated than I was. I beckoned him forward with my knife hand. 'Come on I don't got all night!' I challenged. Dashing in with a snarl, our blades twanged off each other, slashes went wide on both sides as I caught an opening. I slashed his wrist with my blade, twisted it over his wrists but both of our blades ended up slipping off onto the ground. He unceremoniously shoved me and up and over I went like I was thrown from a speeding car. My back clanged off the metal fence of the wall, the entire wall vibrating all the air from my lungs. My vision again twisted in my head as he charged, my arms shooting out sideways, grabbing the bars tight. In a feat of strength, a kick of my feet off the ground I flipped up with my hips the pivot point, used his incoming torso to run up and leave him with a whipping steel toed chin kick on the way by. I landed on the top of the stone wall part on the other side, catching the top bar just below the spiked heads. The hit staggered him but he lept from ten feet away at a direct angle up at me, fingers outstretched to claw me in half. I jumped backwards, twisting in the air and wrapping my arms around his neck as he grabbed me. Too bad he didn't see me clear the fence while his neck was in line for the dulled points of the speared metal decorations. I felt flesh again give way but a lot more resistance was met on the way down and before the first line of steel between the point and the bottom of the 'decorative' spearhead. Gruesomely it stabbed through and his neck now had three inches of a spikes through it. His shoulders in line have two on either side as well, impaled firmly on the black painted metal. I held onto him as he writhed and gargled with my arms keeping him in a headlock. One arm lose, I reached my hand into my jacket and pulled my spare magazine out from a pouch inside it, slamming it into the exposed butt of the pistol in my left fist. A clawed hand came around to my face as I yanked my 9mm out from my hand, clicked the action forward and jammed it right to his temple. "Heal this!" I fired one round point-blank and he burst into the same flame and dust. As he faded from existence, I slipped off right through the loose sand-like substance and hit the ground with the back of my head chipping off the edge of the stone wall, a jolt of pain shot through all the way to the tip of my nose. I came to a stop on the ground ass first and in a seated position in the dirt. I picked myself up off the flowerbed and the bush I had crushed, instinctively picking up the shell casing on the ground and putting it into my pocket. I slowly made my way over the fence, the steel points looking a little burnt but no one was going to notice, more likely the tulips I crushed with my backside. I landed on the ground, looking around cautiously and listening to any sirens or witnesses retrieving the knife I had lost. Nothing so far. I collected the casings off the ground, pain in my body numbly throbbing away as the toll of this insane fight was adding up. I was about to make a run for it when I saw Railius at the end of the block again. I stood off to him and my pistol snapped to his direction, shoulders square and a gun aimed to wait for him to come forward just a little more. Incensed I was standing there, Ralius shook his head side the side slowly in bewilderment. My blade under my pistol pointing forward as he walked towards me, the quarter-inch gouges in the blade apparent like a small torch sliced through the metal in my lower peripheral vision. "How?" He asked me with arms wideout. I wasn't interested in a conversation, I pulled the trigger instead. Multiple times. The rounds hit him right between the eyes within a quarter of an inch. His head whipped backward, twisting away as I walked forward landing every shot somewhere on his skull till the magazine ran empty again. I flicked away the magazine and loading in the last one I had from inside my jacket. Railius didn't fall over or burst into unearthly flames as I had hoped. He turned around to face me again and only small gouges on his face were there and they all snapped shut with a one deep breath in from his nose and a thumbing of his cheek. Fuck. "Just so you know I'm going to kill you." Railius assured with a point, "I want to know how you are not afraid first." I didn't answer, my mind too busy rewiring my questions and uncertainty to find a way to get out of this. I glanced side to side but kept my looks mostly on him as he walked towards me with his blade in hand, flat side over his shoulder, shaking his head at me. My gaze remained the same, he was now angrily beside himself. "I can feel fear." He salivated at me with his hand like he was holding a wine glass, "I can sense weakness. You? You! There is nothing! You can't kill me! You can't beat me! Yet for some reason, there isn't a shred of fear or dread in you! Why?!" I kept my aim up, taking slow steps backward without a word. Eyes glared right back, unyielding at him even if it was only indifferent defiance. "I don't even know myself." I responded bluntly, "Neither of us will get an answer. Either way, you can go fuck yourself." Railius slowly shook his head some more, disbelief overtaking him. It was like he couldn't comprehend what he was seeing or hearing in me. He seemed to fight with himself, pacing back and forth a few paces across the street. Pointing at me at times, my aim following him regardless of confusion and anger changing predominance on his face every few seconds. "Okay then I have a really great idea!" Railus came up with something clasping his hands together, "I like you. Really. I do. So you get something special. You believe in monsters human?" "Known a few." I replied cocking the hammer back. "Then maybe this monster be more to your liking." He snapped his fingers, 'Dokugumon!' At first, nothing happened, but from on high the sound of what started a demented sigh turned out to be an increasing roar until a bulbous form landed right behind Railus with a ground waving thud. A large being, the size of an off-road pickup truck rose up now from its landing stance. This one was a smooth bulb but still, the pointed-haired adorned rear second shape, a painted skull and bones seemingly painted on the shell on it reared up. Large tubes of limbs flared out, the hairs long and spiked on it, eight of them. A churning sensation of what that could not possibly be was right there in front of my very eyes as they went wide as they ever had been, as the masked arachnid face with long jutting horns to the side and the glassy red eight eyes popped out from behind Railius's back. A yawned open a wide fanged mouth in a roar with two large mandibles flaring out, its front legs having three-fingered clawed hands with armored gauntlets over them reaching up in curled clawed fingers. Standing eight feet tall behind Railius as he stepped aside to showcase his summoned monster. 'Can you do me a favor?" Railius asked lovingly, "Drain every drop of blood out of his body for me." The monster's eyes showed my reflection as it lowered itself to pounce, a guttural laugh coming out of it letting me know what a voice of hell sounds like, its long tubular feet pads scratch the ground. One thing came to mind. "Next time take the cab home.' I scolded myself.

#gennai #archer #dokugumon #fallen_agents #combat #violence #mature

0 notes