Post by The Reaper on Aug 30, 2021 2:42:24 GMT -5
Helsing was up in arms as Reaper announced over the radio to confirm that Hija Himura was truly dead, at the hands of the two legends Adam and Amy. They had finally won the war against Umbrella fought for over twenty years, a war that had seen the end of so many of their friends, but more importantly Hija’s final breath was taken from him by an agent of Helsing, revenge for their lost former leader.
Elias sat in his study drinking, looking over files, the Obsidian strike on the city months ago had displaced so many of his people and White Rabbit entirely taking out the old Rabbit HQ, but the two had been working together using assets from one another in order to steer a war that they would have lost otherwise. Gabe Lachney and the mysterious Tyrant group worked hand in hand like a scalpel while Helsing was a fucking hammer when needed.
Without Amy Grace, Adam Kurgan, or Arix Himura in the picture the three resistance groups (Tyrant, White Rabbit and Blu) were seen as weak, while Obsidian feared the fabled Red Devil that no longer existed. It didn’t help that Helsing had some extremely heavy hitters among its ranks, his two replacement operators for Alucard were always in the field delivering killing blows to the remaining Hex 42 and the Obsidian Devils.
There came a knock, and Elias asked them to enter. Reaper stepped through the door in his black suit and crossed the study.
“If you had told me a year ago that I would be fighting a proxy war against a ghost Umbrella faction that shouldn’t exist, I’d of told you that I was just a man hunting vampires,” Elias said offering his hand out for Reaper to take a seat in the lounge chair across from him, “Mr. Reaper, so far your employ with us has just been ceremonious due to the circumstances of your uh… Resurrection.”
“First off, don’t be formal with me, you aren’t the formal type and you’re just playing it up to look professional,” Reaper said, “and second, if you’re offering me a job, I decline. I’ll take work but I’m not siding a banner.”
“Fair enough on both counts,” Elias said and he poured a straight whiskey in a glass and handed it over to Reaper, “well, I think we got something for you that’ll pique some interest. An assassination.”
“Name the target,” Reaper said.
“If you’re so keen to erase the monster from the world, you need to erase a mistake it sired into the world,” Elias said and together they took a drink, Elias let out an ah noise as he lowered his glass, “say what you will about American alcohol, this shit is good.”
“So, I’m to kill Maricul,” Reaper asked.
“Bingo,” Elias said, “her little stunt back half a year ago may have gotten media attention but ultimately it didn’t put her on our radar. A minor blimp, rumor through the grapevine was it twisted her undead panties that Alucard wouldn’t come after her deeming her a ‘waste of a glory hole swallow.’ Word is she’s shacked up with some weirdos known as GUARDIAN. Don’t know her involvement exactly but it looks like they’ve become some sort of knock off group of ours.”
“How so?”
“Their leader enslaved her as an attack dog and has other agents working for them. All in all, they’re a splinter group and considered radicals,” Elias said and finished his drink, “take care of them as you will if necessary.”
“No holding back?”
“Nope,” Elias said and pointed at him, “just a straight shot, wipe them all out for all I care. I’m not going to lie, I’m fucking sick of splinter groups and knock off copies. One more fucking clone appears in this city and I’m going to give Seras full orders to eradicate it regardless if its friendly or not.”
Reaper chuckled, then in one drink finished the half glass of whiskey, “alright, give me an address.”
“You’re gonna be in luck, there’s a mercenary faction known as Isafaro that’s hiding out in the ruins and GUARDIAN is moving on them tonight.”
Midnight
The Ruins of Old Raccoon
The gun fight had already broken out. Since the attack on the ruins, it was mostly empty aside from the squatters present now and a massive interest in this Isafaro faction by a bunch of randoms. Reaper was smoking a cigarette as he walked down an adjacent street from the firefight. He could hear yells from Isfaro’s mercs as his target tore through them.
“Why hesitate,” came a voice.
“I want to see how many I can get out in the open, do this all at once,” Reaper replied.
“Smart,” the voice came from his other side, “yet, I expected a bloodbath.”
He took the cigarette from his lips and tossed it and turned down the connecting street. When he stopped it was on the corner with two sides on opposite shoulders of him while several fought through the ruins in front of him mostly. Isafaro’s mercenaries seemed more or less unskilled and relied mostly on advanced technology as a crutch, while GUARDIAN was as Elias said, just a knock off Helsing with freaks all the same. They had chosen the night to fight the mercenaries to put the fight in Mariculs favor since she was a high threat vampire like her sire. The threat level of both sides was pretty high overall, yet Reaper tipped the balance.
“Let's play them a song,” he said and raised his hand where his guitar was ripped through shadows into his palm almost like it materialized out of thin air, he plucked the strings to a dark tune as the shadows flooded the area blocking out the sky in a thick dense fog. Howling could be heard, as could the snarling of other monsters, ghouls and monsters alike.
“The world is an overflowing gutter, it bubbles with the brine of shit and blood. And those who keep their eyes upon the heavens, are the ones that wind up faces down in the mud,” he sang with a dry tune, it was darker than the tune he usually carried and that was saying something since he was the man in black, “It’s easy to speak of grand ambitions, its easy to pretend your innocent. But lest you get distracted by the suffering of your sisters being practical and trying to pay the rent.”
“Heaven has been promised to the righteous, Hell’s an overpopulated pit. Purgatory’s given to the dreamers, but the world belongs to those who plow the shit.”
The guitar continued to play but next he appeared his hands were empty aside from what looked like a butterfly knife, it was bloodied and he was dragging a blond young man by the arm, his throat cut so deep his head dangled by a skin flap, he was wearing an Isfaro uniform with the name tag labeled D. White. There were panicked screams as the Reaper seemed to burst when bullets were fired in his direction hitting him in the chest. He was no longer there but the corpse of his latest kill was. The man who fired at him was gurgling, his friend barely had a chance to look over to see a headless corpse falling before the knife buried itself into his eye.
He didn’t even bother face checking targets, he took on Alucards tactic of just killing whatever moved. Unfortunately for one of the mercs on the other side she moved too fast and he pulled a revolver so fast off his hip she barely could raise her rifle in response and took a bullet to her left eye blowing a hole through her face and out the back. When she hit the ground Reaper looked puzzled, “I think I just killed Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
Not too far away
12:13AM
“Look, that shit look paranormal to me,” Shinta said, they were in the ruins looking for ghosts, or whatever it was that Tori’s people did and the fog came rolling in fast and thick.
“Fine,” Tori said, “we’ll check it out.”
The moment the crew got together and moved into the fog their screams could be heard, Shinta ran out of the fog but a long ghoulish hand snatched the back of his coat and ripped him off his feet pulling him back in, before he hit the fog several hooks jammed into his chest and began pulling from two different directions. He screamed in agony until his death howls were heard when his body was torn in two by powerful opposing forces.
The Front Line
12:15AM
“What the fuck is this,” Alexis asked, “the fog just come out of nowhere. Why?”
“It’s him,” Zira replied, “the Red Devil.”
The singing continued suddenly, “cast off the limitations of the righteous, there are good deeds only devils can commit. Let us dance between the teardrops and the angels for the world belongs to those who plow the shit.”
It was growing closer and closer before the man holding a guitar appeared, his pale skin, the tattoos on his neck and hands, the black suit, it was all the monicar of the Reaper in flesh, “The dead become the emperors of memory, the saints have all been eaten by the worms. The living will write a twisted future and the sinners all have practical concerns.”
“What do you want,” Alexis demanded, her tune was as stupid as the question she asked, she lacked tact let alone the mental fortitute to understand why she was a target, harboring a demon at her side, a high level vampire in her employ, let alone the countless others that would join her. She was unsanctioned, served no government, no hand guided hers and for that she was no better than Umbrella in his eyes.
“I’ve come to collect the lost souls that have escaped Darwin,” he said and Zira raised her hands ready to strike, “please, you are as much of a threat to me as you are to anyone else who actually lives in this world.”
She made a move, he didn’t have to. The Red Devil himself manifested from her right ripping his long arm through her torso splitting in her half. Her guts it the ground before she was even dead. Her eyes had sheer horror in them as she face planted the floor, the last thing she saw was Alexis being held high in the air by the bloody hand of the Red Devil, grasping at the front of her face so that she could not speak.
“You do not kill her, instead you condemn her to servitude? I might think her a waste of my life essence, but as my kin she will die a proper death,” the Red Devil growled and Alexis’s panicked muffled screams could be heard, along with the cracking of her jaw as he gripped harder. When he let her go she hit the ground hard, her jaw displaced, her tongue fell from her mouth having accidentally bitten it off under the pressure. He stomped the back of her elbow breaking her arm in a way that her forearm bone ripped through her flesh and as her chest hit the ground and she screamed he slammed the back of his boot onto her neck crushing her skull and demolishing her head in a display of gore across the pavement.
“You think she’s done killing the cast of whatever shit Thursday night 90s sitcom is out there fighting,” Reaper asked.
“Most likely, you don’t feel anyone else alive out there do you?”
“Just her,” Reaper said.
He lit a cigarette and the fog dispersed. His familiars had been busy as much as Maricul had been. Isafaro was gored, some teen sitcom paranormal hunters had been caught in the crossfire, a photographer with a mullet, hell, looked like a budget assassin and the mom off stranger things somehow got mixed up, probably a bad investment into the tech behind this budget war.
On the other side of things, the Vulture himself was dead, so was his commander, some kind of Anne Hathaway look alike. Reaper was honestly astonished by how many faces he could pick out of what he assumed was a 1990s weekend movie getaway.
“You not him,” Maricul said, Reaper wasn’t sure if she fumbled her words or if she actually talked like that but he paid no mind to it, “what do you want? You obviously killed them for a reason.”
“Just reclaiming the blood wasted on turning you,” Reaper said and he reached for his hip pulling his silver plated revolver off his side, one of the many weapons on his person, “we can do this the easy way or the easier way.”
“What that mean,” Maricul asked, “you not taking me serious?”
“When has anyone taken you seriously,” Reaper asked and he fired his weapon, somehow she dodged it and retaliated by sending a wave of snakes at him that threatened to strangle him yet never came close as the shadows spiked through them ripping them apart. He was rubbing the barrel of his gun against his temple when she made her next move pulling two pistols.
“Oh for fuck sake,” Reaper said dashing forward and slapped her gun from her left hand as he kicked her in the chest when she fired, her bullet missed due to the momentum of being punted like a sack of potatoes and Reaper began firing at her but she dodged each shot with her, speed. He blinked several times, surely he wasn’t this inaccurate. There was no detail to her movements, she just moved and dodged, “fuck this.”
He turned away from her and holstered his weapon, when he gave his back to her she went to retaliate and suddenly a hellhound ripped through reality from the shadows of the night catching her at the hip and tore through her. He kept walking as her mangled body hit the ground, she was starting to regenerate when a set of footsteps was heard from behind her half torn apart body.
A boot pressed against what remained of her back, “you had so much potential, yet, all you were was a disappointment.”
“Master.”
“No,” the Red Devil said, “you don’t deserve to claim you were anything more than a waste of shit I left behind when I bit some sorry fuck I thought might learn a thing or two. Should I ever see you again, I will kill you again, and again, and again, until I’ve had my fill. Now, die you sorry sack of shit.”
He pressed the barrel of the 13mm Jackal to the back of her skull and fired. Nothing remained of her head, she would never be identified, she would only be forgotten.
Helsing
1AM
Reaper entered the study, Elias was reading a file and looked up.
“Good timing,” Elias said tossing the file across the table where it was displayed to him, a Red Haired woman lay dead in the picture to a sword slash across her throat, there were about ten other slashes on her torso, “Himura sent some pictures, he was busy cleaning up the other part of this GUARDIAN situation.”
“Who was that,” Reaper asked.
“Uh, I think they called her Ranko. Not sure though, not important enough to cross my desk. She just happened to say the right words and Himura already had kill orders on GUARDIAN members going through BLU. If you read into the report he’s got Jack and Ela cleaning house on these freaks that seemingly fell from the sky from what they claim is another dimension known as Aircano.”
“Any truth to it,” Reaper asked as he sat down.
“Fuck if I know, they say don’t drink the water in the city, I’m assuming they did,” Elias replied and both of them had a good laugh before Elias changed his tune, “how about another job?”
“What’s this one for? Want me to kill circus clowns,” Reaper replied.
“You might find yourself struggling with that one, imagine they pull up four cars deep and an army of clowns exits the cars,” Elias shuddered, “terrifying compared to what you faced tonight.”
“What’s the target,” Reaper asked again.
“Umbrella is under, Hex is next,” Elias said.
Elias sat in his study drinking, looking over files, the Obsidian strike on the city months ago had displaced so many of his people and White Rabbit entirely taking out the old Rabbit HQ, but the two had been working together using assets from one another in order to steer a war that they would have lost otherwise. Gabe Lachney and the mysterious Tyrant group worked hand in hand like a scalpel while Helsing was a fucking hammer when needed.
Without Amy Grace, Adam Kurgan, or Arix Himura in the picture the three resistance groups (Tyrant, White Rabbit and Blu) were seen as weak, while Obsidian feared the fabled Red Devil that no longer existed. It didn’t help that Helsing had some extremely heavy hitters among its ranks, his two replacement operators for Alucard were always in the field delivering killing blows to the remaining Hex 42 and the Obsidian Devils.
There came a knock, and Elias asked them to enter. Reaper stepped through the door in his black suit and crossed the study.
“If you had told me a year ago that I would be fighting a proxy war against a ghost Umbrella faction that shouldn’t exist, I’d of told you that I was just a man hunting vampires,” Elias said offering his hand out for Reaper to take a seat in the lounge chair across from him, “Mr. Reaper, so far your employ with us has just been ceremonious due to the circumstances of your uh… Resurrection.”
“First off, don’t be formal with me, you aren’t the formal type and you’re just playing it up to look professional,” Reaper said, “and second, if you’re offering me a job, I decline. I’ll take work but I’m not siding a banner.”
“Fair enough on both counts,” Elias said and he poured a straight whiskey in a glass and handed it over to Reaper, “well, I think we got something for you that’ll pique some interest. An assassination.”
“Name the target,” Reaper said.
“If you’re so keen to erase the monster from the world, you need to erase a mistake it sired into the world,” Elias said and together they took a drink, Elias let out an ah noise as he lowered his glass, “say what you will about American alcohol, this shit is good.”
“So, I’m to kill Maricul,” Reaper asked.
“Bingo,” Elias said, “her little stunt back half a year ago may have gotten media attention but ultimately it didn’t put her on our radar. A minor blimp, rumor through the grapevine was it twisted her undead panties that Alucard wouldn’t come after her deeming her a ‘waste of a glory hole swallow.’ Word is she’s shacked up with some weirdos known as GUARDIAN. Don’t know her involvement exactly but it looks like they’ve become some sort of knock off group of ours.”
“How so?”
“Their leader enslaved her as an attack dog and has other agents working for them. All in all, they’re a splinter group and considered radicals,” Elias said and finished his drink, “take care of them as you will if necessary.”
“No holding back?”
“Nope,” Elias said and pointed at him, “just a straight shot, wipe them all out for all I care. I’m not going to lie, I’m fucking sick of splinter groups and knock off copies. One more fucking clone appears in this city and I’m going to give Seras full orders to eradicate it regardless if its friendly or not.”
Reaper chuckled, then in one drink finished the half glass of whiskey, “alright, give me an address.”
“You’re gonna be in luck, there’s a mercenary faction known as Isafaro that’s hiding out in the ruins and GUARDIAN is moving on them tonight.”
Midnight
The Ruins of Old Raccoon
The gun fight had already broken out. Since the attack on the ruins, it was mostly empty aside from the squatters present now and a massive interest in this Isafaro faction by a bunch of randoms. Reaper was smoking a cigarette as he walked down an adjacent street from the firefight. He could hear yells from Isfaro’s mercs as his target tore through them.
“Why hesitate,” came a voice.
“I want to see how many I can get out in the open, do this all at once,” Reaper replied.
“Smart,” the voice came from his other side, “yet, I expected a bloodbath.”
He took the cigarette from his lips and tossed it and turned down the connecting street. When he stopped it was on the corner with two sides on opposite shoulders of him while several fought through the ruins in front of him mostly. Isafaro’s mercenaries seemed more or less unskilled and relied mostly on advanced technology as a crutch, while GUARDIAN was as Elias said, just a knock off Helsing with freaks all the same. They had chosen the night to fight the mercenaries to put the fight in Mariculs favor since she was a high threat vampire like her sire. The threat level of both sides was pretty high overall, yet Reaper tipped the balance.
“Let's play them a song,” he said and raised his hand where his guitar was ripped through shadows into his palm almost like it materialized out of thin air, he plucked the strings to a dark tune as the shadows flooded the area blocking out the sky in a thick dense fog. Howling could be heard, as could the snarling of other monsters, ghouls and monsters alike.
“The world is an overflowing gutter, it bubbles with the brine of shit and blood. And those who keep their eyes upon the heavens, are the ones that wind up faces down in the mud,” he sang with a dry tune, it was darker than the tune he usually carried and that was saying something since he was the man in black, “It’s easy to speak of grand ambitions, its easy to pretend your innocent. But lest you get distracted by the suffering of your sisters being practical and trying to pay the rent.”
“Heaven has been promised to the righteous, Hell’s an overpopulated pit. Purgatory’s given to the dreamers, but the world belongs to those who plow the shit.”
The guitar continued to play but next he appeared his hands were empty aside from what looked like a butterfly knife, it was bloodied and he was dragging a blond young man by the arm, his throat cut so deep his head dangled by a skin flap, he was wearing an Isfaro uniform with the name tag labeled D. White. There were panicked screams as the Reaper seemed to burst when bullets were fired in his direction hitting him in the chest. He was no longer there but the corpse of his latest kill was. The man who fired at him was gurgling, his friend barely had a chance to look over to see a headless corpse falling before the knife buried itself into his eye.
He didn’t even bother face checking targets, he took on Alucards tactic of just killing whatever moved. Unfortunately for one of the mercs on the other side she moved too fast and he pulled a revolver so fast off his hip she barely could raise her rifle in response and took a bullet to her left eye blowing a hole through her face and out the back. When she hit the ground Reaper looked puzzled, “I think I just killed Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
Not too far away
12:13AM
“Look, that shit look paranormal to me,” Shinta said, they were in the ruins looking for ghosts, or whatever it was that Tori’s people did and the fog came rolling in fast and thick.
“Fine,” Tori said, “we’ll check it out.”
The moment the crew got together and moved into the fog their screams could be heard, Shinta ran out of the fog but a long ghoulish hand snatched the back of his coat and ripped him off his feet pulling him back in, before he hit the fog several hooks jammed into his chest and began pulling from two different directions. He screamed in agony until his death howls were heard when his body was torn in two by powerful opposing forces.
The Front Line
12:15AM
“What the fuck is this,” Alexis asked, “the fog just come out of nowhere. Why?”
“It’s him,” Zira replied, “the Red Devil.”
The singing continued suddenly, “cast off the limitations of the righteous, there are good deeds only devils can commit. Let us dance between the teardrops and the angels for the world belongs to those who plow the shit.”
It was growing closer and closer before the man holding a guitar appeared, his pale skin, the tattoos on his neck and hands, the black suit, it was all the monicar of the Reaper in flesh, “The dead become the emperors of memory, the saints have all been eaten by the worms. The living will write a twisted future and the sinners all have practical concerns.”
“What do you want,” Alexis demanded, her tune was as stupid as the question she asked, she lacked tact let alone the mental fortitute to understand why she was a target, harboring a demon at her side, a high level vampire in her employ, let alone the countless others that would join her. She was unsanctioned, served no government, no hand guided hers and for that she was no better than Umbrella in his eyes.
“I’ve come to collect the lost souls that have escaped Darwin,” he said and Zira raised her hands ready to strike, “please, you are as much of a threat to me as you are to anyone else who actually lives in this world.”
She made a move, he didn’t have to. The Red Devil himself manifested from her right ripping his long arm through her torso splitting in her half. Her guts it the ground before she was even dead. Her eyes had sheer horror in them as she face planted the floor, the last thing she saw was Alexis being held high in the air by the bloody hand of the Red Devil, grasping at the front of her face so that she could not speak.
“You do not kill her, instead you condemn her to servitude? I might think her a waste of my life essence, but as my kin she will die a proper death,” the Red Devil growled and Alexis’s panicked muffled screams could be heard, along with the cracking of her jaw as he gripped harder. When he let her go she hit the ground hard, her jaw displaced, her tongue fell from her mouth having accidentally bitten it off under the pressure. He stomped the back of her elbow breaking her arm in a way that her forearm bone ripped through her flesh and as her chest hit the ground and she screamed he slammed the back of his boot onto her neck crushing her skull and demolishing her head in a display of gore across the pavement.
“You think she’s done killing the cast of whatever shit Thursday night 90s sitcom is out there fighting,” Reaper asked.
“Most likely, you don’t feel anyone else alive out there do you?”
“Just her,” Reaper said.
He lit a cigarette and the fog dispersed. His familiars had been busy as much as Maricul had been. Isafaro was gored, some teen sitcom paranormal hunters had been caught in the crossfire, a photographer with a mullet, hell, looked like a budget assassin and the mom off stranger things somehow got mixed up, probably a bad investment into the tech behind this budget war.
On the other side of things, the Vulture himself was dead, so was his commander, some kind of Anne Hathaway look alike. Reaper was honestly astonished by how many faces he could pick out of what he assumed was a 1990s weekend movie getaway.
“You not him,” Maricul said, Reaper wasn’t sure if she fumbled her words or if she actually talked like that but he paid no mind to it, “what do you want? You obviously killed them for a reason.”
“Just reclaiming the blood wasted on turning you,” Reaper said and he reached for his hip pulling his silver plated revolver off his side, one of the many weapons on his person, “we can do this the easy way or the easier way.”
“What that mean,” Maricul asked, “you not taking me serious?”
“When has anyone taken you seriously,” Reaper asked and he fired his weapon, somehow she dodged it and retaliated by sending a wave of snakes at him that threatened to strangle him yet never came close as the shadows spiked through them ripping them apart. He was rubbing the barrel of his gun against his temple when she made her next move pulling two pistols.
“Oh for fuck sake,” Reaper said dashing forward and slapped her gun from her left hand as he kicked her in the chest when she fired, her bullet missed due to the momentum of being punted like a sack of potatoes and Reaper began firing at her but she dodged each shot with her, speed. He blinked several times, surely he wasn’t this inaccurate. There was no detail to her movements, she just moved and dodged, “fuck this.”
He turned away from her and holstered his weapon, when he gave his back to her she went to retaliate and suddenly a hellhound ripped through reality from the shadows of the night catching her at the hip and tore through her. He kept walking as her mangled body hit the ground, she was starting to regenerate when a set of footsteps was heard from behind her half torn apart body.
A boot pressed against what remained of her back, “you had so much potential, yet, all you were was a disappointment.”
“Master.”
“No,” the Red Devil said, “you don’t deserve to claim you were anything more than a waste of shit I left behind when I bit some sorry fuck I thought might learn a thing or two. Should I ever see you again, I will kill you again, and again, and again, until I’ve had my fill. Now, die you sorry sack of shit.”
He pressed the barrel of the 13mm Jackal to the back of her skull and fired. Nothing remained of her head, she would never be identified, she would only be forgotten.
Helsing
1AM
Reaper entered the study, Elias was reading a file and looked up.
“Good timing,” Elias said tossing the file across the table where it was displayed to him, a Red Haired woman lay dead in the picture to a sword slash across her throat, there were about ten other slashes on her torso, “Himura sent some pictures, he was busy cleaning up the other part of this GUARDIAN situation.”
“Who was that,” Reaper asked.
“Uh, I think they called her Ranko. Not sure though, not important enough to cross my desk. She just happened to say the right words and Himura already had kill orders on GUARDIAN members going through BLU. If you read into the report he’s got Jack and Ela cleaning house on these freaks that seemingly fell from the sky from what they claim is another dimension known as Aircano.”
“Any truth to it,” Reaper asked as he sat down.
“Fuck if I know, they say don’t drink the water in the city, I’m assuming they did,” Elias replied and both of them had a good laugh before Elias changed his tune, “how about another job?”
“What’s this one for? Want me to kill circus clowns,” Reaper replied.
“You might find yourself struggling with that one, imagine they pull up four cars deep and an army of clowns exits the cars,” Elias shuddered, “terrifying compared to what you faced tonight.”
“What’s the target,” Reaper asked again.
“Umbrella is under, Hex is next,” Elias said.
