A DEVIL'S FRAGMENT
DEVILS are CODE RED by nature. They command Legions of Demons and one appearing can be considered as a disaster. A hurricane in a form of a grotesque creature.
Killing a DEVIL is impossible so far. But you can prevent them from coming back through sealing their existence and revealing their true name. Once a devil’s true name is revealed, there is no way for the devil to gain power - according to the Church at least.
A demon doesn’t have that. A fragment of a devil produces demons. And demons are CODE ORANGE by nature and needs HG Graded Agents to contain or kill.
I can hear a river somewhere.
I recover my breathing and look at the floating buildings. About 3-4 stories high. The doors have skins. The windows have eyes. Roofs have teeth protruding upwards and the sky was a still lake water.
The spare sword Eta gave me has lost its heating function. I can smell burnt meat on it. Still sharp so I took it with me.
Air smelled like smog still. I can’t see smog however. There are creatures of undead nature being spit out by the doors of the houses. I see one of the doors open and I see something resembling a woman’s privates birthing out the undead.
Curious, I looked at the cut at the building where the innards of the building spilled. Large intestines fill the street and from the intestines are maggots of the size of dogs making squeaky sounds. Groaning and clawing out to the sky.
“You sane?”
A voice called. I position my spare sword in front and point at the voice.
“I am. You?”
“Sane.”
He scowls and moves forward. He groans at the sight of the large intestine and the maggots crawling out.
“Name’s Jackie. You with the Sevens?”
“Affiliate of the Seven Swords, and from Kei’s Office.”
“Shit. You ain’t rescue then?”
“No. We entered the area and got split up.”
Jackie walks out of the attack range of the maggots and checks for an undead before sitting down.
“Can I link up with your time?”
“Sure.”
I took out my transmitter and sync it. He eyes the transmitter data readings.
“Five years. Fuck.”
“Time is dilated here?”
“Looks like it.”
He isn’t old. He is still in his twenties. He is wearing a defunct company badge. He has three arms. Does he not know?
“You were Sam Associate?”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“They got bankrupt two years ago. Most of their members got mauled by a flesh golem in Istanbul.”
“Fuck off.”
“No reason to lie to you. So you are part of a lost team?”
“That’s right.”
I look around again. The endless street. Living buildings and the ‘parasites’ in the form of an undead suggest that this is the internal of a Risk Level 4 Anomaly -- at least ORANGE class.
I sit down and join my fingers. I can feel my face hardening up.
“How did you survive?”
“It’s been only a week for me.”
“Oh. How?”
“Had packed canned goods.”
“What have you tried?”
“Walking. Fighting. Killing. Rituals. And even prayers to God.”
“What about the practical?”
“Couldn’t do it. There are so few materials that I can use here. And the buildings aren’t searchable either.”
I look at the webbing on his chest. He is packing explosives of a brand I have no clue about. Explosives aren't in my repertoire.
“We can search the buildings that have chemicals. From the looks of it the monster has devoured an entire block. This whole place might just be a stomach.”
“How can you say that?”
I point at the street markings.
“It’s not warped. It hasn’t noticed it. Also we can sync our transmitters meaning that it is working within our radius only.”
“It’s probably chewing the inhabitants on the buildings. It’s probably their stomach.”
“Most likely.”
Jackie checks his rifle's mag and then replaces it.
“I saw a waste disposal center. Follow me.”
He enters the alley. I follow him and we cross through multiple alleys full of clotheslines made of flesh. Deep into the direction where we are going there is clear transformation of flesh replacing the paving.
We found the waste disposal center. I can hear the river. I follow the sound and find the river sticky and full of tiny worm-like parasites inhabiting it. Jackie tears through the waste disposal center and signals me to come over. I helped him plant the explosives and made sure that once the center is blasted, the waste chemicals will go to the river.
“I feel dumb not realizing it.”
“No, your mind was starting to warp. You’re growing a third hand on your spine by the way.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Fuck. Can you cut it for me? I don’t want the church finding out that I have a mutation.”
“I can scrape it and pull the bone. Might fucked you up though. You sure? Arm could be expensive.”
“Nope. Don't need Church Militants coming for me. Oh, don’t worry. I don’t have a human spine anymore.”
I check his spine. It’s an IV-alloy model spine that induces hyper-focus and enhance reflexes reaction. I prepare my spare sword to cut the extra hand. I then scraped what was left of it and then pulled the 7 inches bones and joint that has been connected to his spine model. Jackie didn’t scream. I can hear something click on his back. It looks like he is using a pain editor to regulate his senses.
“A pain editor?”
“Yeah. Are you done?”
“Not yet. I need your knife.”
I pulled the knife out of Jackie’s sheathe and then scraped the rest until I got the bone and flesh out. He has a medical patch so I burnt it on his flesh too.
“Got it.”
“Thanks. How come you didn’t tell me that first?”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“Oh, you were planning to cut my neck then?”
I shrug. I walked out of the blast radius and hid behind a growling trash bin. The blast shook two blocks. Fragments of the waste disposal center and debris shoot out like shotgun blasts all over the area.
“How much explosives were you packing?”
“It was an Elemental Arsenal Workshop bomb.”
“So we detonated the equivalent of a warhead?”
“Yup.”
I got out of cover and walked to where the waste was spilling out. The chemicals are mixing into the bloodstream of the Anomaly and slowly I can hear it groaning and then a scream.
The flesh compressed into a ball and exploded into tendrils flying everywhere. I positioned my spare sword and swung. Jackie shields himself, but the tendrils stab his arms and carved his flesh, piercing his subdermal armor and the weave under it.
My senses turn white. I can’t hear, smell, and feel for a moment before I find myself falling from the sky at quite a height. I pierce through a cloud.
I can hear whistling. I focus my eyes below and find a canal. I rotated my body, but it wasn’t enough so I dumped all the explosive rounds of my pistol Pollux to give me enough force to direct my body to the canal.
I see Jackie emptying his gun as he falls from the sky too. But Jackie didn’t produce enough push from his gun and wasn’t able to land in the canal, so he got turned into a meat patty on the side of the canal. The insides of his head painted the pavement. Only the non-human augments of his remained from his paste-like flesh. I straightened my legs and plunged deep into the canal. I realize that it is not water. I swam to the side, bent my legs, and jumped out of the liquid, pointed my left arm and fired the grappling mod on the side of the building.
I feel disgusted. I spit the liquid out and then move to where Jackie got turned into a meat patty. His weapon’s broken. His dimenbag is intact so I took it. I picked up Jackie’s dominant hand’s thumb to activate his transmitter and changed the biometrics of his dimenbag to my own prints.
I dropped the transmitter on the ground and crushed it under my foot. I pulled one of the clothes inside the dimenbag and wiped myself clean. I didn’t want my coat ruined so I stored it inside the dimensional bag.
I knock my knuckles on the spare sword that Eta gave me and I can tell it has been dulled. I scraped the flesh on it with the side of the pavement and turned my head to where I heard a commotion.
I follow the noise and see a group of survivors facing down a snake-like creature with a heart for a head throwing tendril after tendril at the Agents.
“Hey, Assistant’s alive.”
I found the voice and saw Elvira with only one arm. Kei’s watching the battle while Eta is worn down, full of scratches and wounds. She lost a lot of blood it seems.
Kei turns to me.
“A, you’ve been missing for five weeks now.”
“Time dilation it seems.”
Kei smiles.
“Did you fall too?”
“Yup. I landed on a canal.”
“Lucky.”
I look at her legs. Both legs are facing the opposite direction of where it should be.
“Hard fall?”
“Eta managed to reduce the fall damage for me, but still enough to shatter and break my legs.”
“How’s your spine?”
“Not damaged at least.”
I turn to Elvira who is waiting for her turn. Her stump didn’t look fine at all. Like it was sawn off. She’s only wearing a tank top and her breast is spread. Some of her hair looks like it got melted.
“Lost your jacket?”
“Yeah. It pisses me off.”
“I have a medical patch here.”
“Oh, a dimenbag. You got lucky, eh?”
I removed the bandage around her bicep’s stump and applied the medical patch. I took out the blood shot and then handed it over to Eta who injected it straight into her veins. Her pale skin regains color.
“Got any food?”
Kei asks.
“Want to eat here?”
“Don’t want to die hungry.”
“Same.”
I searched the dimenbag for Jackie's canned goods and handed it over to them. I opened one for myself and then ate. Elvira was staring me down so I let her grab a handful of the meat.
I sat cross-legged on the floor.
“So are they subduing it?”
“They are doing well.”
“What happened anyway?”
Kei kneads her forehead.
“As far as I recall. We entered the vicinity of the outskirts. One of Elvira’s associates talked to an elderly and shook the elderly’s hand. I assume that the handshake was the ‘agreement’ that the anomaly needed to bring everyone into its inner realm.”
There’s barely any members of this agreement with us here. I think we had fifty entering and 20 are barely alive.
“We got through!”
Someone shouts. Elvira springs into action followed by Eta. The two start cleaving into the heart alongside the Agents who are with them.
“This was a big suppression. Is our pay going to be huge, Ma’am.”
“What’s with you, A? Do you think the Sevens wouldn’t give our payment after this mess? They will. I got the data that we need and it’ll net us some royalties for it.”
It’s strange. I can’t understand their play here. Is there a cooperation between the Seven Sword and the company we are working with?
“We don’t get the materials then.”
“Nope.”
I stood in front of Kei and swung my sword at the tendrils coming. Some of the tendrils cut through the steel and concrete. Kei fishes out her cigarette and takes a long drag out of it.
“Oh yeah, it’s your third month already. Did I transfer your wage already, Assistant?”
“Don’t think so. I might need a new coat or a vest.”
She slaps me on the stomach.
“You sure like your suits. That a habit now?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it's not a bad look. Makes you look professional at least.”
“You’re going to make attend meetings and seminars for you, Ma’am?”
“Probably.”
She takes another drag and then throws the cigarette. I turned to where the heart is and I found them hammering a stake full of beautiful symbols and purity seals waxed on the flat top of the stake.
As they land the final hammer blows to the demon’s heart.
Everything went white again.
I am now standing in front of a concrete building with the tip of my nose touching the surface of a concrete wall. I was inches away from being inside the concrete and steel structure. If I had been moved inches forward. My face would have been stuck on the concrete or I would be possibly inside the concrete. Thankfully I wasn’t. Kei’s back however was near the wall, the moment we got transported, because of the position she was in, the skin on her back got skinned when we got transported.
Her back has been flayed and she’s holding on to her shirt and bra while grinding her teeth in pain.
I see one of the agents with his arm in a wall. Some of the agents' limbs got stuck inside trash bins and benches while the unfortunate ones got transported inside the concrete and got crushed inside. The ones with augmentations were alive as their sensors emitted a blast that prevented them from being squeezed like a juice by the concrete.
I took out an injection and stabbed it on Kei’s shoulder blade and took out my coat. She pulled her clothes off her chest, her bra dropping down on the pavement. She wore the coat, and buttoned it up. I handed her some painkillers to ease the pain.
Eta walks towards us while dragging her left ankle. Elvira spat on the floor. Eta takes an irritated breath and mutters loudly for everyone to hear.
“I hate demons so fucking much.”
A DEVIL'S FRAGMENT
DEVILS are CODE RED by nature. They command Legions of Demons and one appearing can be considered as a disaster. A hurricane in a form of a grotesque creature.
Killing a DEVIL is impossible so far. But you can prevent them from coming back through sealing their existence and revealing their true name. Once a devil’s true name is revealed, there is no way for the devil to gain power - according to the Church at least.
A demon doesn’t have that. A fragment of a devil produces demons. And demons are CODE ORANGE by nature and needs HG Graded Agents to contain or kill.
I can hear a river somewhere.
I recover my breathing and look at the floating buildings. About 3-4 stories high. The doors have skins. The windows have eyes. Roofs have teeth protruding upwards and the sky was a still lake water.
The spare sword Eta gave me has lost its heating function. I can smell burnt meat on it. Still sharp so I took it with me.
Air smelled like smog still. I can’t see smog however. There are creatures of undead nature being spit out by the doors of the houses. I see one of the doors open and I see something resembling a woman’s privates birthing out the undead.
Curious, I looked at the cut at the building where the innards of the building spilled. Large intestines fill the street and from the intestines are maggots of the size of dogs making squeaky sounds. Groaning and clawing out to the sky.
“You sane?”
A voice called. I position my spare sword in front and point at the voice.
“I am. You?”
“Sane.”
He scowls and moves forward. He groans at the sight of the large intestine and the maggots crawling out.
“Name’s Jackie. You with the Sevens?”
“Affiliate of the Seven Swords, and from Kei’s Office.”
“Shit. You ain’t rescue then?”
“No. We entered the area and got split up.”
Jackie walks out of the attack range of the maggots and checks for an undead before sitting down.
“Can I link up with your time?”
“Sure.”
I took out my transmitter and sync it. He eyes the transmitter data readings.
“Five years. Fuck.”
“Time is dilated here?”
“Looks like it.”
He isn’t old. He is still in his twenties. He is wearing a defunct company badge. He has three arms. Does he not know?
“You were Sam Associate?”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“They got bankrupt two years ago. Most of their members got mauled by a flesh golem in Istanbul.”
“Fuck off.”
“No reason to lie to you. So you are part of a lost team?”
“That’s right.”
I look around again. The endless street. Living buildings and the ‘parasites’ in the form of an undead suggest that this is the internal of a Risk Level 4 Anomaly -- at least ORANGE class.
I sit down and join my fingers. I can feel my face hardening up.
“How did you survive?”
“It’s been only a week for me.”
“Oh. How?”
“Had packed canned goods.”
“What have you tried?”
“Walking. Fighting. Killing. Rituals. And even prayers to God.”
“What about the practical?”
“Couldn’t do it. There are so few materials that I can use here. And the buildings aren’t searchable either.”
I look at the webbing on his chest. He is packing explosives of a brand I have no clue about. Explosives aren't in my repertoire.
“We can search the buildings that have chemicals. From the looks of it the monster has devoured an entire block. This whole place might just be a stomach.”
“How can you say that?”
I point at the street markings.
“It’s not warped. It hasn’t noticed it. Also we can sync our transmitters meaning that it is working within our radius only.”
“It’s probably chewing the inhabitants on the buildings. It’s probably their stomach.”
“Most likely.”
Jackie checks his rifle's mag and then replaces it.
“I saw a waste disposal center. Follow me.”
He enters the alley. I follow him and we cross through multiple alleys full of clotheslines made of flesh. Deep into the direction where we are going there is clear transformation of flesh replacing the paving.
We found the waste disposal center. I can hear the river. I follow the sound and find the river sticky and full of tiny worm-like parasites inhabiting it. Jackie tears through the waste disposal center and signals me to come over. I helped him plant the explosives and made sure that once the center is blasted, the waste chemicals will go to the river.
“I feel dumb not realizing it.”
“No, your mind was starting to warp. You’re growing a third hand on your spine by the way.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Fuck. Can you cut it for me? I don’t want the church finding out that I have a mutation.”
“I can scrape it and pull the bone. Might fucked you up though. You sure? Arm could be expensive.”
“Nope. Don't need Church Militants coming for me. Oh, don’t worry. I don’t have a human spine anymore.”
I check his spine. It’s an IV-alloy model spine that induces hyper-focus and enhance reflexes reaction. I prepare my spare sword to cut the extra hand. I then scraped what was left of it and then pulled the 7 inches bones and joint that has been connected to his spine model. Jackie didn’t scream. I can hear something click on his back. It looks like he is using a pain editor to regulate his senses.
“A pain editor?”
“Yeah. Are you done?”
“Not yet. I need your knife.”
I pulled the knife out of Jackie’s sheathe and then scraped the rest until I got the bone and flesh out. He has a medical patch so I burnt it on his flesh too.
“Got it.”
“Thanks. How come you didn’t tell me that first?”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“Oh, you were planning to cut my neck then?”
I shrug. I walked out of the blast radius and hid behind a growling trash bin. The blast shook two blocks. Fragments of the waste disposal center and debris shoot out like shotgun blasts all over the area.
“How much explosives were you packing?”
“It was an Elemental Arsenal Workshop bomb.”
“So we detonated the equivalent of a warhead?”
“Yup.”
I got out of cover and walked to where the waste was spilling out. The chemicals are mixing into the bloodstream of the Anomaly and slowly I can hear it groaning and then a scream.
The flesh compressed into a ball and exploded into tendrils flying everywhere. I positioned my spare sword and swung. Jackie shields himself, but the tendrils stab his arms and carved his flesh, piercing his subdermal armor and the weave under it.
My senses turn white. I can’t hear, smell, and feel for a moment before I find myself falling from the sky at quite a height. I pierce through a cloud.
I can hear whistling. I focus my eyes below and find a canal. I rotated my body, but it wasn’t enough so I dumped all the explosive rounds of my pistol Pollux to give me enough force to direct my body to the canal.
I see Jackie emptying his gun as he falls from the sky too. But Jackie didn’t produce enough push from his gun and wasn’t able to land in the canal, so he got turned into a meat patty on the side of the canal. The insides of his head painted the pavement. Only the non-human augments of his remained from his paste-like flesh. I straightened my legs and plunged deep into the canal. I realize that it is not water. I swam to the side, bent my legs, and jumped out of the liquid, pointed my left arm and fired the grappling mod on the side of the building.
I feel disgusted. I spit the liquid out and then move to where Jackie got turned into a meat patty. His weapon’s broken. His dimenbag is intact so I took it. I picked up Jackie’s dominant hand’s thumb to activate his transmitter and changed the biometrics of his dimenbag to my own prints.
I dropped the transmitter on the ground and crushed it under my foot. I pulled one of the clothes inside the dimenbag and wiped myself clean. I didn’t want my coat ruined so I stored it inside the dimensional bag.
I knock my knuckles on the spare sword that Eta gave me and I can tell it has been dulled. I scraped the flesh on it with the side of the pavement and turned my head to where I heard a commotion.
I follow the noise and see a group of survivors facing down a snake-like creature with a heart for a head throwing tendril after tendril at the Agents.
“Hey, Assistant’s alive.”
I found the voice and saw Elvira with only one arm. Kei’s watching the battle while Eta is worn down, full of scratches and wounds. She lost a lot of blood it seems.
Kei turns to me.
“A, you’ve been missing for five weeks now.”
“Time dilation it seems.”
Kei smiles.
“Did you fall too?”
“Yup. I landed on a canal.”
“Lucky.”
I look at her legs. Both legs are facing the opposite direction of where it should be.
“Hard fall?”
“Eta managed to reduce the fall damage for me, but still enough to shatter and break my legs.”
“How’s your spine?”
“Not damaged at least.”
I turn to Elvira who is waiting for her turn. Her stump didn’t look fine at all. Like it was sawn off. She’s only wearing a tank top and her breast is spread. Some of her hair looks like it got melted.
“Lost your jacket?”
“Yeah. It pisses me off.”
“I have a medical patch here.”
“Oh, a dimenbag. You got lucky, eh?”
I removed the bandage around her bicep’s stump and applied the medical patch. I took out the blood shot and then handed it over to Eta who injected it straight into her veins. Her pale skin regains color.
“Got any food?”
Kei asks.
“Want to eat here?”
“Don’t want to die hungry.”
“Same.”
I searched the dimenbag for Jackie's canned goods and handed it over to them. I opened one for myself and then ate. Elvira was staring me down so I let her grab a handful of the meat.
I sat cross-legged on the floor.
“So are they subduing it?”
“They are doing well.”
“What happened anyway?”
Kei kneads her forehead.
“As far as I recall. We entered the vicinity of the outskirts. One of Elvira’s associates talked to an elderly and shook the elderly’s hand. I assume that the handshake was the ‘agreement’ that the anomaly needed to bring everyone into its inner realm.”
There’s barely any members of this agreement with us here. I think we had fifty entering and 20 are barely alive.
“We got through!”
Someone shouts. Elvira springs into action followed by Eta. The two start cleaving into the heart alongside the Agents who are with them.
“This was a big suppression. Is our pay going to be huge, Ma’am.”
“What’s with you, A? Do you think the Sevens wouldn’t give our payment after this mess? They will. I got the data that we need and it’ll net us some royalties for it.”
It’s strange. I can’t understand their play here. Is there a cooperation between the Seven Sword and the company we are working with?
“We don’t get the materials then.”
“Nope.”
I stood in front of Kei and swung my sword at the tendrils coming. Some of the tendrils cut through the steel and concrete. Kei fishes out her cigarette and takes a long drag out of it.
“Oh yeah, it’s your third month already. Did I transfer your wage already, Assistant?”
“Don’t think so. I might need a new coat or a vest.”
She slaps me on the stomach.
“You sure like your suits. That a habit now?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it's not a bad look. Makes you look professional at least.”
“You’re going to make attend meetings and seminars for you, Ma’am?”
“Probably.”
She takes another drag and then throws the cigarette. I turned to where the heart is and I found them hammering a stake full of beautiful symbols and purity seals waxed on the flat top of the stake.
As they land the final hammer blows to the demon’s heart.
Everything went white again.
I am now standing in front of a concrete building with the tip of my nose touching the surface of a concrete wall. I was inches away from being inside the concrete and steel structure. If I had been moved inches forward. My face would have been stuck on the concrete or I would be possibly inside the concrete. Thankfully I wasn’t. Kei’s back however was near the wall, the moment we got transported, because of the position she was in, the skin on her back got skinned when we got transported.
Her back has been flayed and she’s holding on to her shirt and bra while grinding her teeth in pain.
I see one of the agents with his arm in a wall. Some of the agents' limbs got stuck inside trash bins and benches while the unfortunate ones got transported inside the concrete and got crushed inside. The ones with augmentations were alive as their sensors emitted a blast that prevented them from being squeezed like a juice by the concrete.
I took out an injection and stabbed it on Kei’s shoulder blade and took out my coat. She pulled her clothes off her chest, her bra dropping down on the pavement. She wore the coat, and buttoned it up. I handed her some painkillers to ease the pain.
Eta walks towards us while dragging her left ankle. Elvira spat on the floor. Eta takes an irritated breath and mutters loudly for everyone to hear.
“I hate demons so fucking much.”
