Post by The Reaper on Aug 26, 2021 14:25:34 GMT -5
He strummed the guitar one strong stroke, the notes he hit were out of this world yet familiar to the ear. It was a set piece but not from this world, one that was possibly from another lifetime entirely. He walked the broken streets, signs of war, blood stained into concrete and stone. The walls were full of bullet holes from a battle long since had, scratches from claws deep in the pavement as well as holes made from some kind of monster, yet it didn’t matter, all were dead long ago.
The notes he played drew the attention of those around him, squatting in the ruins of a city long since dead. He had never been here but the war had. The war here was longer than anywhere else, it was fought from day one until the fall of the government. The man's stylish black loafers clicked as he walked, the acoustic guitar continued to play notes as he moved. His black hair was slicked back tidy and neat while the stony look on his face was a man displaced by time, he sported a thick beard and a black suit, his hands covered in tattoos of some North American tribe.
And so he sang, “I feel like death warmed up, I can’t taste the coffee in my cup, I feel so low I’m underground, every time you’re not around…”
His voice was displaced by time, strong and heavy but weighted by the smoke of whiskey and cigar. His words carried, “And if I didn’t feel so high, if I didn’t feel so proud, then I would cry, I wouldn’t feel so down when you’re not around.”
People began to leave their hiding places, the ones already on the street around pits of fire and makeshift stalls trading out goods with one another took notice to the man in black as he sang his song, “you come and fill me up, with ecstasy, and pain. And then I run on empty til I see you again. But I’ve got things to do, and places to go. No, I don’t feel so great, I can’t taste the sandwich on my plate, I try to sing but there’s no sound, every time you’re not around.”
He stood there as people gathered around, the strum of his guitar was sad, the sound of his voice was an old country tone but something more of this century all the same, “And if I didn’t feel so high, if I didn’t feel so proud, I would cry… I wouldn’t feel so down, when you’re not around…”
He strummed the last note and slowly moved the guitar to his back by its strap while several of the people clapped politely. He was well off looking compared to them and he walked without a smile putting hands on their shoulders and giving them words of encouragement as he walked by them entering the building he had stood across.
“Always a showman,” said a woman's voice, she was smoking by the window staring out of it.
“When there is no hope, it is a man’s job to try,” he replied.
She let out a small laugh and offered a cigarette from the pack from her pocket and he graciously took it and put it between his lips, they leaned in together and put the tips of their cigarettes in and breathed life to his.
“For a dead man in his 90s you’re looking pretty good,” she commented as they pulled away trailing smoke from one another.
“You know, I was thinking the same thing from a woman who fell twenty stories out a building,” he replied pointing at her with the cigarette between his fingers.
“What’s your secret?”
“Little birdy,” he came back taking a drag off his cigarette, the flash of his eyes were momentarily orange but it was just a glimpse, “yours?”
“Just a backup,” she said, “helps when you still have a couple perfect rebellious daughters out there and a pocket assassin who can do a soft restore from your last backup.”
“Too fancy for me, I just play the guitar,” he said.
“Well I need your other talent,” her hand went to the desk drawer and she pulled out a single picture and tossed it on the table, “they put him down, but he refuses to die.”
The man picked up the picture and looked it over and shook his head, “what makes you think I can put him down for good?”
“Don’t bullshit me Danny,” she said, “I see it in your eyes, the look of pure chaos. I know what you are, I know what he did to you before your passing. You’re a man out of time now, choosing to look your best in your thirties or forties, always was hard to tell with you. You look good Dan.”
“Thank you, wish I could say the same but you chose the defective clone,” he teased and she gave him the finger before they both smiled, “alright. Where is he?”
“Blu-Umbrella’s remnant forces extracted his corpse-”
“Arix?”
“No,” she replied, “he left Blu after the Obsidian Devil incident. We’re looking at a large scale operation now.”
“No worries there,” he replied, “who is my support on this?”
“Chambers,” she came back, “Jack’s already in position, been there for weeks now holding an angle waiting.”
“Tell him I’ll be there in a day.”
“Will do,” she said as he turned around, putting his cigarette out on the heel of his shoe, he flicked it into a pile on the floor, next to a dustbin and broom.
“Oh and Dan,” she said, he looked over his shoulder, “play us something wont ya?”
He pulled his guitar around, “I’ve been working on this one since I stepped a foot in the grave.”
He strummed fast and heavy, his voice carried as he pushed through the door back onto the street, “They never said I was the chosen one until the first thing happened. They try to put you in a box with all your friends.”
“He keeps a picture of his gun cocked in his wallet with a plastic bag next to a night out where you can’t come back… He’s gonna find you and make it impossible.”
He strummed fast with precision, a song that wasn’t in his style, one that was faster paced than everything he usually sang but one with meaning to the life he breathed now, “I get this feeling I’m never breathing again, perfect timing leaves you exposed to a power you won’ overcome, before a last chance and then you’re done.”
“He’s gonna find you, make it impossible, I get this feeling I’m never breathing again. He’s gonna tempt you, make it impossible, I get this feeling I’ll never feel this feeling again… I get this feeling I’ll never feel this feeling …. Again…”
Zero Hour, the Following Day
He didn’t meet up with the sniper before just moving in on the overhead building leading to the underground facility ruins of Blu-Umbrella. It was located in Raccoon city some many miles away from New York but this place was familiar to him at least. He knew the sniper was watching over his shoulder as he moved.
The chalet was abandoned and in ruin from the original raid by Obsidian some time ago. His ear piece finally came to life on the same frequency as the sniper.
“So, you’re the infamous Danny Reaper? Don’t seem like much,” came a voice, similar to his brother if not a bit more southern jarhead sounding.
“Should you be commenting on legends from the shadow of your brothers accomplishments,” came a reply, and he got a little chuckle.
“We’ll get along just fine,” Jack replied.
“Pleasure to work alongside another Chambers,” said Dan.
“Just give em hell, I’ll make sure they don’t leave.”
Reaper entered the service elevator and pressed the button and began strumming his instrument. The elevator cleared the dark tunnel and opened wide to glass overlooking the sanctuary of Blu-Umbrella where Obsidian was operating out of now under Blu’s name as to draw in its old agents.
When the doors opened he was met by an armed guard, they were met with words, “How can he tell what’s real when he’s not sure how to feel? He is his fathers son, oh, his world weighs a tonne a glass half full is enough to keep you cool when you see it through the eyes of a fool.”
“Is he fucking singing,” Chambers said over the channel to their support unit and then came the sound of blood curtling screams over the earpiece.
“A dance with the red devil and a chance to tell the tale. Prescriptions from physicians will keep him on the rail. A worthless piece of shrapnel among a murder of crows. Keeping his enemies close.”
“What’s going on in there Reaper,” Jack asked, he could hear what sounded like limbs being torn from bodies, the guitar’s tune and the mans voice mixed in with sheer carnage.”
“Wash down the pills, though they give him the chills. A faded reminder of stagnating cider sitting alone in his room. Back on the wall, fixed after all, what a great fall.”
Jack was moving down the hill fast, using his regenerator powers to the fullest to clear gaps that would kill a normal man. He pulled open the elevator shaft and jumped landing on the top of the elevator causing the roof to collapse under his weight. He raised his rifle to a scene straight out of a horror movie.
The men dead here weren’t just killed, they were slaughtered in a way that would put the Red Devils carnage to shame. Limbs were hanging from light fixtures, bodies were twisted in such a way that they were unrecognizable as human. Among these men were 300 series, all dead in a genocide he couldn’t understand quite yet. He was following fast listening over the earpiece.
“Dancing with the Red Devil, be he lived to tell the tale. Prescriptions from physicians never kept him on the rails. A worthless piece of shrapnel among a murder of crows. Reminding his enemies he’s close.”
Jack slid around a corner slipping in blood but barely kept himself up right as he saw the back of the man they called Reaper moving down a hall. It looked as if the shadows were exiting his back under his coat, but the area around him was far darker than anywhere else. The lights seemed to flicker out as he moved and came back on as he cleared them. One of the tendril like shadows dragged a man behind him who was screaming and clawing at the ground so hard his fingernails had ripped from his hands. He was begging as he was pulled from the ground and one of the lingering shadows around the Reaper lashed out like a canine with a hundred red orange eyes and ripped a chunk from his side exposing his ribs as his entrails spilled.
“How can he tell what’s real? When he’s not sure how to feel. Devoid of joy, he was never like the other boys. Despite the practices that he employed he is his father’s son. Oh his world weighs a tonne, a glass half full is enough to keep you cool when you see it through the eyes of a fool.”
Reaper was standing before a door and pressed forward after lighting a cigarette.
He entered a hanger like room, someone familiar with the facility would have seen it as a testing site for the Dead Sight models years before. He waved the match he lit his cigarette without and tossed it aside as he moved in on a crew of soldiers pointing weapons at him, his guitar was hanging from his neck on second and the next wisped away like shadow.
“And you are,” asked the man in charge of the men.
“The Reaper,” he replied.
“I just see a man, walking to his de-”
“Shut the fuck up Saito,” Reaper said and pulled the cigarette from his mouth, “you’re not even a third of what your father was as a man, let alone a monster. I’m not here for you, Grace has that target on your back, I’m here for the father.”
“The- father…”
Saito raised his hand and waved his men off, they lowered their weapons, “come.”
The son of Hija Himura led the way, leading him back out the way he came and down a hall to a lab. When they entered the room was cold but also it was set up unlike a lab, it was a living area. Across from the door was a single desk where a shell of a man sat.
“Here is the father,” Saito said, “do what you will.”
With that Saito left the room, he would gather his men and go in due time. Reaper however entered the room to face what looked like a corpse hanging on to life. He had a breathing tube in his chest, his body was devoid of muscle and covered in scars. The left eye that once put terror in the mind of many was no longer red but pure white. He took a deep, raspy, hard, breath in.
“They sent a dead man to kill me,” he said.
Reaper took a draw from his cigarette and moved close to the desk, he noticed the life support machines keeping him alive, Himura was pumping himself full of a Type Virus to counter the effects of Marcus’s virus, it wasn’t working but he was alive nonetheless.
“Funny, coming from a man we’ve killed a half dozen times,” Reaper said blowing smoke in the direction of Hija who coughed.
“None of them were me... Well… Until the last time,” Himura replied, “still took three of them and a trick to stop me. And I’m going to get out of this chair and kill them one by one.”
“No,” Reaper said, he put his cigarette out on the desk in front of Himura and left the butt there, “you’re done being the boogeyman of the wasteland. I’m here to collect what you refuse to give the people.”
“What, I refuse to give the people?”
“Your soul,” Reaper said, he reached inside his coat and slowly pulled a black pistol from the depths of the holster within, along the side of the pistol was the familiar words that Hija had seen multiple times before, ‘Jesus Christ is in Heaven Now.’
“I see,” Hija said, “one last dance, with the devil.”
The sound of the 13mm weapon echoed the halls and Reaper exited the room crossing paths with Jack Chambers who stared into a room with a headless corpse, a stain of brain matter and blood on the opposite wall.
The Living Dead Station
“Ladies and gentlemen, this next track comes to us live. Claimed to be from the lips of a ghost of a man who claims to have finally collected the soul of the wasteland boogeyman. I give you, The Reaper.”
“Reverend reverend please come quick, ‘cause I got something to admit. I met a man out in the sticks a good ole miss. He drove a series ten Cadillac and wore a cigar on his lip.”
The strum of the guitar was pure magic to his deep voice, “And he said, I know you I know you old man. I know you by the state of your hands. You’re a killer just as I am.”
“Well- Don’t you know the Devil wears a suit and tie, I saw him driving down the sixty one in late july. White as a cotton field and sharp as a knife, I heard him howlin’ as he passed by.”
“Foolish foolish was I, damn my foolish eyes, cause that mans lessons had a price. Oh sweet price. My sweet soul everlasting, my very own eternal light.”
He let the music play out before his voice carried again to the tune, “don’t you know the black devil wears a suit and tie, I saw him driving down the sixty one in late July. White as a cotton field sharp as a knife. I heard him howlin’ as he passed me by… As he passed me- by.”
The notes he played drew the attention of those around him, squatting in the ruins of a city long since dead. He had never been here but the war had. The war here was longer than anywhere else, it was fought from day one until the fall of the government. The man's stylish black loafers clicked as he walked, the acoustic guitar continued to play notes as he moved. His black hair was slicked back tidy and neat while the stony look on his face was a man displaced by time, he sported a thick beard and a black suit, his hands covered in tattoos of some North American tribe.
And so he sang, “I feel like death warmed up, I can’t taste the coffee in my cup, I feel so low I’m underground, every time you’re not around…”
His voice was displaced by time, strong and heavy but weighted by the smoke of whiskey and cigar. His words carried, “And if I didn’t feel so high, if I didn’t feel so proud, then I would cry, I wouldn’t feel so down when you’re not around.”
People began to leave their hiding places, the ones already on the street around pits of fire and makeshift stalls trading out goods with one another took notice to the man in black as he sang his song, “you come and fill me up, with ecstasy, and pain. And then I run on empty til I see you again. But I’ve got things to do, and places to go. No, I don’t feel so great, I can’t taste the sandwich on my plate, I try to sing but there’s no sound, every time you’re not around.”
He stood there as people gathered around, the strum of his guitar was sad, the sound of his voice was an old country tone but something more of this century all the same, “And if I didn’t feel so high, if I didn’t feel so proud, I would cry… I wouldn’t feel so down, when you’re not around…”
He strummed the last note and slowly moved the guitar to his back by its strap while several of the people clapped politely. He was well off looking compared to them and he walked without a smile putting hands on their shoulders and giving them words of encouragement as he walked by them entering the building he had stood across.
“Always a showman,” said a woman's voice, she was smoking by the window staring out of it.
“When there is no hope, it is a man’s job to try,” he replied.
She let out a small laugh and offered a cigarette from the pack from her pocket and he graciously took it and put it between his lips, they leaned in together and put the tips of their cigarettes in and breathed life to his.
“For a dead man in his 90s you’re looking pretty good,” she commented as they pulled away trailing smoke from one another.
“You know, I was thinking the same thing from a woman who fell twenty stories out a building,” he replied pointing at her with the cigarette between his fingers.
“What’s your secret?”
“Little birdy,” he came back taking a drag off his cigarette, the flash of his eyes were momentarily orange but it was just a glimpse, “yours?”
“Just a backup,” she said, “helps when you still have a couple perfect rebellious daughters out there and a pocket assassin who can do a soft restore from your last backup.”
“Too fancy for me, I just play the guitar,” he said.
“Well I need your other talent,” her hand went to the desk drawer and she pulled out a single picture and tossed it on the table, “they put him down, but he refuses to die.”
The man picked up the picture and looked it over and shook his head, “what makes you think I can put him down for good?”
“Don’t bullshit me Danny,” she said, “I see it in your eyes, the look of pure chaos. I know what you are, I know what he did to you before your passing. You’re a man out of time now, choosing to look your best in your thirties or forties, always was hard to tell with you. You look good Dan.”
“Thank you, wish I could say the same but you chose the defective clone,” he teased and she gave him the finger before they both smiled, “alright. Where is he?”
“Blu-Umbrella’s remnant forces extracted his corpse-”
“Arix?”
“No,” she replied, “he left Blu after the Obsidian Devil incident. We’re looking at a large scale operation now.”
“No worries there,” he replied, “who is my support on this?”
“Chambers,” she came back, “Jack’s already in position, been there for weeks now holding an angle waiting.”
“Tell him I’ll be there in a day.”
“Will do,” she said as he turned around, putting his cigarette out on the heel of his shoe, he flicked it into a pile on the floor, next to a dustbin and broom.
“Oh and Dan,” she said, he looked over his shoulder, “play us something wont ya?”
He pulled his guitar around, “I’ve been working on this one since I stepped a foot in the grave.”
He strummed fast and heavy, his voice carried as he pushed through the door back onto the street, “They never said I was the chosen one until the first thing happened. They try to put you in a box with all your friends.”
“He keeps a picture of his gun cocked in his wallet with a plastic bag next to a night out where you can’t come back… He’s gonna find you and make it impossible.”
He strummed fast with precision, a song that wasn’t in his style, one that was faster paced than everything he usually sang but one with meaning to the life he breathed now, “I get this feeling I’m never breathing again, perfect timing leaves you exposed to a power you won’ overcome, before a last chance and then you’re done.”
“He’s gonna find you, make it impossible, I get this feeling I’m never breathing again. He’s gonna tempt you, make it impossible, I get this feeling I’ll never feel this feeling again… I get this feeling I’ll never feel this feeling …. Again…”
Zero Hour, the Following Day
He didn’t meet up with the sniper before just moving in on the overhead building leading to the underground facility ruins of Blu-Umbrella. It was located in Raccoon city some many miles away from New York but this place was familiar to him at least. He knew the sniper was watching over his shoulder as he moved.
The chalet was abandoned and in ruin from the original raid by Obsidian some time ago. His ear piece finally came to life on the same frequency as the sniper.
“So, you’re the infamous Danny Reaper? Don’t seem like much,” came a voice, similar to his brother if not a bit more southern jarhead sounding.
“Should you be commenting on legends from the shadow of your brothers accomplishments,” came a reply, and he got a little chuckle.
“We’ll get along just fine,” Jack replied.
“Pleasure to work alongside another Chambers,” said Dan.
“Just give em hell, I’ll make sure they don’t leave.”
Reaper entered the service elevator and pressed the button and began strumming his instrument. The elevator cleared the dark tunnel and opened wide to glass overlooking the sanctuary of Blu-Umbrella where Obsidian was operating out of now under Blu’s name as to draw in its old agents.
When the doors opened he was met by an armed guard, they were met with words, “How can he tell what’s real when he’s not sure how to feel? He is his fathers son, oh, his world weighs a tonne a glass half full is enough to keep you cool when you see it through the eyes of a fool.”
“Is he fucking singing,” Chambers said over the channel to their support unit and then came the sound of blood curtling screams over the earpiece.
“A dance with the red devil and a chance to tell the tale. Prescriptions from physicians will keep him on the rail. A worthless piece of shrapnel among a murder of crows. Keeping his enemies close.”
“What’s going on in there Reaper,” Jack asked, he could hear what sounded like limbs being torn from bodies, the guitar’s tune and the mans voice mixed in with sheer carnage.”
“Wash down the pills, though they give him the chills. A faded reminder of stagnating cider sitting alone in his room. Back on the wall, fixed after all, what a great fall.”
Jack was moving down the hill fast, using his regenerator powers to the fullest to clear gaps that would kill a normal man. He pulled open the elevator shaft and jumped landing on the top of the elevator causing the roof to collapse under his weight. He raised his rifle to a scene straight out of a horror movie.
The men dead here weren’t just killed, they were slaughtered in a way that would put the Red Devils carnage to shame. Limbs were hanging from light fixtures, bodies were twisted in such a way that they were unrecognizable as human. Among these men were 300 series, all dead in a genocide he couldn’t understand quite yet. He was following fast listening over the earpiece.
“Dancing with the Red Devil, be he lived to tell the tale. Prescriptions from physicians never kept him on the rails. A worthless piece of shrapnel among a murder of crows. Reminding his enemies he’s close.”
Jack slid around a corner slipping in blood but barely kept himself up right as he saw the back of the man they called Reaper moving down a hall. It looked as if the shadows were exiting his back under his coat, but the area around him was far darker than anywhere else. The lights seemed to flicker out as he moved and came back on as he cleared them. One of the tendril like shadows dragged a man behind him who was screaming and clawing at the ground so hard his fingernails had ripped from his hands. He was begging as he was pulled from the ground and one of the lingering shadows around the Reaper lashed out like a canine with a hundred red orange eyes and ripped a chunk from his side exposing his ribs as his entrails spilled.
“How can he tell what’s real? When he’s not sure how to feel. Devoid of joy, he was never like the other boys. Despite the practices that he employed he is his father’s son. Oh his world weighs a tonne, a glass half full is enough to keep you cool when you see it through the eyes of a fool.”
Reaper was standing before a door and pressed forward after lighting a cigarette.
He entered a hanger like room, someone familiar with the facility would have seen it as a testing site for the Dead Sight models years before. He waved the match he lit his cigarette without and tossed it aside as he moved in on a crew of soldiers pointing weapons at him, his guitar was hanging from his neck on second and the next wisped away like shadow.
“And you are,” asked the man in charge of the men.
“The Reaper,” he replied.
“I just see a man, walking to his de-”
“Shut the fuck up Saito,” Reaper said and pulled the cigarette from his mouth, “you’re not even a third of what your father was as a man, let alone a monster. I’m not here for you, Grace has that target on your back, I’m here for the father.”
“The- father…”
Saito raised his hand and waved his men off, they lowered their weapons, “come.”
The son of Hija Himura led the way, leading him back out the way he came and down a hall to a lab. When they entered the room was cold but also it was set up unlike a lab, it was a living area. Across from the door was a single desk where a shell of a man sat.
“Here is the father,” Saito said, “do what you will.”
With that Saito left the room, he would gather his men and go in due time. Reaper however entered the room to face what looked like a corpse hanging on to life. He had a breathing tube in his chest, his body was devoid of muscle and covered in scars. The left eye that once put terror in the mind of many was no longer red but pure white. He took a deep, raspy, hard, breath in.
“They sent a dead man to kill me,” he said.
Reaper took a draw from his cigarette and moved close to the desk, he noticed the life support machines keeping him alive, Himura was pumping himself full of a Type Virus to counter the effects of Marcus’s virus, it wasn’t working but he was alive nonetheless.
“Funny, coming from a man we’ve killed a half dozen times,” Reaper said blowing smoke in the direction of Hija who coughed.
“None of them were me... Well… Until the last time,” Himura replied, “still took three of them and a trick to stop me. And I’m going to get out of this chair and kill them one by one.”
“No,” Reaper said, he put his cigarette out on the desk in front of Himura and left the butt there, “you’re done being the boogeyman of the wasteland. I’m here to collect what you refuse to give the people.”
“What, I refuse to give the people?”
“Your soul,” Reaper said, he reached inside his coat and slowly pulled a black pistol from the depths of the holster within, along the side of the pistol was the familiar words that Hija had seen multiple times before, ‘Jesus Christ is in Heaven Now.’
“I see,” Hija said, “one last dance, with the devil.”
The sound of the 13mm weapon echoed the halls and Reaper exited the room crossing paths with Jack Chambers who stared into a room with a headless corpse, a stain of brain matter and blood on the opposite wall.
The Living Dead Station
“Ladies and gentlemen, this next track comes to us live. Claimed to be from the lips of a ghost of a man who claims to have finally collected the soul of the wasteland boogeyman. I give you, The Reaper.”
“Reverend reverend please come quick, ‘cause I got something to admit. I met a man out in the sticks a good ole miss. He drove a series ten Cadillac and wore a cigar on his lip.”
The strum of the guitar was pure magic to his deep voice, “And he said, I know you I know you old man. I know you by the state of your hands. You’re a killer just as I am.”
“Well- Don’t you know the Devil wears a suit and tie, I saw him driving down the sixty one in late july. White as a cotton field and sharp as a knife, I heard him howlin’ as he passed by.”
“Foolish foolish was I, damn my foolish eyes, cause that mans lessons had a price. Oh sweet price. My sweet soul everlasting, my very own eternal light.”
He let the music play out before his voice carried again to the tune, “don’t you know the black devil wears a suit and tie, I saw him driving down the sixty one in late July. White as a cotton field sharp as a knife. I heard him howlin’ as he passed me by… As he passed me- by.”
