I have decided to crosspost this from spacebattles so that more people can read it.

Hope you enjoy the writing.

Warning: This is Dark. Do not read if you hate gore, dark themes or indiscriminate death

Brockton Bay
Winslow High School
Jan 15, 2011

First Incursion

Madison Clements had thought today was going to be a good day. The prank had gone off without a hitch. Taylor was stuck in her Locker and after a few hours, she'd be let out with not much harm done except to her dignity and pride. If she was honest with herself, Madison was uncomfortable with the whole "locker" idea, it seemed very cruel for Taylor to be trapped in a such a small locker with whatever Sophia and Emma had filled it with for several hours, considering no one she knew actually had any malice towards the girl. But she couldn't speak up and risk he precarious social position she had just to stop some "harmless teasing". Madison had begun to not believe Emma's word for their torment of Taylor, in her eyes it had gone far past teasing and into merciless bullying.

But honestly, what could she do? In an attempt to ensure she wasn't at the bottom of the complex, school social hierarchy, she had tied her entire school life to Emma Barnes and Sophia Hess who were the two of the most popular girls in school who had no gang or drug connections of which there were frightfully few. Emma was a social butterfly and Sophia was a star athlete, it wasn't a hard decision to make to try and fit in with them to try and avoid being bullied. So she had changed her style, switching comfortable shirts and pants to strapless tops and skirts, and she had forced herself to be more "cute".
It had worked, for the most part. Emma and Sophia had welcomed her with open arms, letting her into their social circle. She was popular and her school life was firmly secured, no gang groupie or asshole could get her now.

Too bad that it was absolute shit.
Emma and Sophia had turned out to be sadistic to the extreme. Teasing, playing pranks, tripping down stairs, insults... There was almost nothing they wouldn't do to prove that they were "stronger" than the people they bullied. It made Madison sick, but she stuck through it. She smiled and pretended to enjoy it and take part as well, all because she had seen what would happen to her if she didn't. It had continued like that for a while, Madison just getting through the day, everyday and hoping that whatever those two did, that it wasn't too bad.

And then Taylor Hebert happened.

Madison didn't know what had happened to make Emma and Sophia hate her so much but it clearly showed. Months of bullying and harassment, worse pranks that they had ever done before. If Emma and Sophia had made Madison uncomfortable then, they outright terrified her now. They had shown a side to them that Madison had originally associated with people like Hookwolf and Lung. Cold, sadistic and ruthless were what those two were to Taylor Hebert. Thanks to the high school version of a smear campaign, Taylor's fellow students now saw her as almost everything undesirable, even if the different views were nonsensical and contradictory. Madison saw something different. She saw what could happen to her.

The constant bullying that Taylor underwent was exactly what Madison wanted to avoid and she felt sick everyday that she helped Emma do it to her. And everyday she saw what new torment they had planned for Taylor, her fear of speaking up grew. The bullying was obvious, no matter what the teachers or Blackwell said, but somehow Emma and Sophia had enough leverage over the whole school, including the actual faculty, that everyone essentially ignored her plight. The students did so because they didn't care, were oblivious or just were scared of their reputation while the teachers did so for some nebulous reason that just made her believe speaking up wouldn't solve anything. At this rate, only a signed confession would get anything done and while normally Madison could, and would, do so...

It didn't look like it would do much.

They say that you didn't see the corruption until you'd try and get something done and you didn't see how much the 1% owned until you were looking out their penthouse window. She had seen both. Taylor hadn't taken her torment laying down, not by a long shot. Early on, she had reported every harassment, every instance of bullying and probably recorded it all as well, Probably still was, but everytime she did there was always some excuse to why they would do nothing. The excuses were long, varied and technically true, which just made Madison more convinced that Emma and Sophia had something on the faculty that made them ignore the bullying. Not to mention that the bullying always got harsher after every report Taylor did and all that did was convince Madison that speaking up would not only accomplish nothing, her life would be hell immediately afterwards.

So what could she do? The Answer? Simply continue on and pretend to be the adorable little hanger on that agrees with everything that Emma Barnes does.
It was the choice that kept her school life safe. It was the choice that would ensure that she didn't end up like Taylor. So why did she feel that it wasn't the right choice...

This is what had kept her mind occupied as she sat in the cafeteria that day. It was better than wondering what horrible thing Sophia had stocked Taylor's locker with, especially when Madison had asked that Sophia had said that it was "appropriate".

Madison was suddenly thrown out of her Moral questioning when she suddenly felt something happening to the cafeteria. She suddenly felt tense. She felt fear. She felt as if the air itself was trying to rip her to shreds and would actually enjoy her suffering.

She looked around the room and she saw that everyone else had also noticed the change. Emma next to her by the cafeteria table looked scared, more scared than Madison had ever seen her while Sophia across from her looked... Excited? The other students in the cafeteria seemed to edge on the scared side of the spectrum, maybe because they all realized what the change probably meant.
A Cape the school seemed to be thinking. It wasn't that big of an assumption, Winslow was shit and it was only a matter of time before some kid with powers decided to go Carrie on it.

The tension was only going up and the oppressive feeling was only getting worse, some of the more sensitive boys and girls had even broken down in tears at the sheer hatred that filled the room.

And then, with a flash of red light. A creature entered the room.

It was the size of a man, coloured a light brown and black. On each black had sat three fingers and a thumb, sharp nails similar to claws on each digit tip. It was hunched over, the legs bent almost completely. Its tough hard skin covered a smooth head while two, glowing red eyes stared out hatefully from its permanently sneering face. The skin around it's mouth was black with no lips, showing off every sharp tooth in it's mouth. After closer inspection, it looked like all the brown segments were some sort of organic armor. small spikes and hard shell was covered the creature, including on it's eyes, two horn like protrusions sweeping back as two mandible-like protrusions jutted out from the chin.

Although it had an intimidating appearance, that wasn't what had scared the cafeteria into silence. The way it looked at the gathered students was not the way an animal would look at prey or how a human that hated you would look. No, it was wrong, demonic. The way those glowing eyes stared at the scared high school students and staff was that it would kill them all...

For nothing but its own enjoyment.

They stayed like that for a second. The humans and the creature just staring at each other, one in fear and the other in hate. The stillness was broken when the creature lunged out with its right claw at a nearby student, ripping into the unfortunate boy's chest.

Then, as the beast decided to gather fire in its other hand and throw it at a student, all hell broke loose as everyone in the cafeteria screamed.
And as more flashes of red light filled the room, Madison Clements reflected that, despite her best attempts, her life had gone to hell anyway.
And if she was unlucky, she might be going there soon.

Jack Wells looked at his sacrificial circle with a feeling of pride. It had taken a lot of time to do everything to how the Masters wanted him to. It took him even longer to find allies who would help him in his journey to enrich humanity. The amount of people who reacted negatively to his plans was... troubling but at least he kept his knife clean after silencing those who would want to stop his plans.

The circle gave off a warm, hellish light. The body of the sacrifice had already been disintegrated by the energies the Masters were pushing through it and the only evidence that it existed in the first place was the blood that covered the floor that reflected the light that the diagram of the circle was emitting. He gazed lazily at the other sacrifices that he and his fellow worshipers had gathered. There were male, female, students, staff, gangers, dealers... all of them were equal for the purpose that they were chosen for and all of them were scared of their fate to be sacrificed for the glory of the Masters. Honestly, getting the necessary sacrifices had been the easiest part as they had simply been gathered with little care to evidence or subtlety.

It wasn't as if the authorities would matter soon anyway.

Suddenly a host of screams resonated throughout the school, making the sacrifices whimper and fidget within their restraints. While the captives felt fear, the screams of terror made Jack and the other cultists' hearts soar. The Masters were here at last. He wanted nothing more to fall in supplication to the Masters who had already made the trip from Hell but unfortunately he still had his duties to perform. The way was not completely open and he would have to change that.

"Bring another sacrifice! Our Masters will not brook delay on their glorious conquest!" he shouted to his fellow worshipers. In response, they eagerly picked up a sacrifice at random, an older senior girl this time who made scared noises from behind the tape on her mouth. At one point, Jack would have felt pity or even horror at these sacrifices' fates especially as he used to be a student but that was before the Masters illuminated him to the true destiny of humanity.

As they threw her into the circle, he began intoning the incantation the Masters had shared with him to open the way. Jack had work to do and wouldn't stop until there was Hell on Earth.

I just sat there.
In the hallway, covered in blood with torn and broken lockers, some of them on fire, I just sat there.

I used to want to be a hero, to help people. But now all i could do was sit in this hallway while my fellow students died.
Mr Shannon, a lazy security guard that worked for the school, was lying motionless next to Mr Quinlin's classroom.
He was on fire, his bald head having already turned from a reddened white to charcoal black as the fire did it's work with an almost unnatural ferocity
I knew he was dead, the fact he was in two pieces of meat told me that.

Alyssa, a student that was once bullied by the E88 and ABB for her dark skin, and Sophia for being bullied until she stood up for herself, was lying further down the hallway against one of the lockers. She was dead, her throat had been torn open and the bleeding had stopped, there was no more blood left to bleed.
Jason, Empire 88 and a classmate, was lying slightly away from Alyssa. His skin, showing his mixed European and almost unnoticeable Latino heritage, was speckled with crimson from the canyon in his chest. It looked like he had tried to protect Alyssa before he died, and then she did.

The hallway was filled with similar stories. People of all kinds, where there would normally be hatred and tension, united in an effort to survive.
Before they died that is.

And here I just sat, Knee-deep in the Dead.

I let out a small "Heh". Who knew I could get so poetic?
I couldn't find the will to find someplace to hide or escape, so I just sat there.
I must be in shock, I thought to myself How else am I so calm with so many dead people around?
It was weird. I knew I should be panicking, I should be scared.
So why am I angry?

I was angry. Since this... catastrophe started, it was like the air itself wanted you to die, but not just die, It wanted you to have the most agonizing death you could.
A normal person would've felt fear at the sheer oppressive atmosphere, but a part of me snarled at it. That part of me yelled and screamed at the idea of dying, of these things killing me and that part got louder for every dead person I saw.
It didn't make sense to me, I had seen the monsters that were killing everyone and the other students had screamed and ran in fear, trembling and crying from them. Why didn't I feel the same? When they had attacked, I was shocked. I saw people i knew dying around me and I didn't want to hide or scream in fear.
I wanted to kill them.
I guess it was the fight part of a "flight or fight" response. I didn't even know I had a side to me that was violent enough to seriously consider killing.
Was i still me? It was hard to feel anything past the numbness, besides the anger of course. Even as I sat in the deserted hallway, I could feel the urge to fight, to kill growing stronger.

I had seen crime before, everyone in Brockton Bay has, but I had never felt this way before. It was all so different, the criminals of the Bay, capes and otherwise, had so many reasons to do what they did.
But this was just slaughter. There wasn't any reason that these people were dead, because these creatures, these demons, needed no reason to kill. That violent piece of me rallied against the slaughter, the senseless cruelty that these demons were perpetuating.

But so many people were dead. It wasn't hard to imagine that the PRT and the Protectorate had already been called and would deal with the demons soon.
Was there a reason to fight after so much had been lost?

"Oh my God." A soft female voice caught my attention. I turned to look at the source of the voice and saw a girl staring at where Alyssa and Jason were lying. I recognized her, she was one of my classmates, Bethany I think. She looked different from this morning though, her white strapped top had drops of red on it, most likely when blood had splattered near her and there was a single gash down the length of her arm.

She looked away from the corpses and turned her head in my direction, horror and fear still written on her face. Then her eyes caught sight of me and she She looked at me in shock. I looked back at her in a calm numbness. Her features turned to relief and she ran towards me.
"OhthankGodsomeoneisalive" She kept repeating as she ran towards me. As she got closer I could see that blood had splattered against her face and that there were tear marks down her face with new tears already on their way.

She ran up to me and tried to pull me up by my arm. She succeeded but stopped when she saw my calm face. "Come on, we have to go." She pleaded to me in a fearful tone. Her face tensed up quickly, as though she was trying to remember something. "...Greg? Greg, we need to hide!" she pleaded. Why was she trying to get me to go along with her?
That question would have to go unanswered because as she looked at something past me , she screamed.

I whirled around and I saw something that used to be a person. It looked like a corpse, probably was, that had been left out in the sun too long. The skin was dried out and gray. The figure had withered away until it was almost skeletal. The eyes had sunken so far back into it's head, if they were still there at all, I couldn't see them. Despite it being withered, It was still deformed with a large growth around the shoulder. It was wearing the scraps of a security uniform but besides that, there were no distinguishing features of what it used to be. It growled, the sound coming from a dried throat, through teeth stained with blood. It looked exactly on how you would imagine an undead or zombie. It shambled forward towards Bethany, looking solely at her and ignoring me, like it was drawn to her fear.

Considering her scream, she might have just irritated the zombie however.
Bethany quickly let go of my arm, and scrambled away. The sheer feeling of numbness and calm kept me from joining her and the buried anger wanted me to actually flail towards the zombie in an attempt to kill it. The end result of my emotional turmoil was that I just stood there, a neutral expression on my face, watching the situation play out in front of me.

A small part of me noted that the situation was rather comical as it seemed that the zombie was so slow that you could actually outrun it at a fast walking pace. If Bethany just turned around and jogged away, it would lose sight of her extremely quickly. Unfortunately, Bethany wasn't doing that.
Apparently the fear of seeing a reanimated corpse had been too much for her and she had fallen to the floor and started crawling away. Or the fact that the zombie had somehow sneaked up on us without even trying might have given her a fright?

Honestly, being in shock really messed with your perspective on things.

The zombie was preparing to lunge for her, Bethany still hadn't gotten far away enough.
I wanted to do something, but my arms felt like they were made of lead. The zombie was right in front of me now, still intent on a screaming Bethany.
I wanted to do something, anything.
I felt angry at myself for not being able to not do anything.

Then I could feel my rage spike through my unnatural calm.

Before I knew it, I had grabbed the zombie mid lunge. I had underestimated the strength of the zombie though, and we went flailing in a tangle of limbs to the side of the hallway. When we landed, I felt my head slam against the hard floor, stunning me. I felt my vision go blurry and I tried to focus my vision again. I felt weight shifting on top of me and a skull-shaped thing entered my vision. I decided to keep it away from me, and as my vision cleared I saw that it was probably the right decision. The zombie was now on top of me, trying and thankfully failing to grab my throat with it's teeth. The constantly gnashing teeth dripping blood onto my pasty skin and blond hair.
It was all I could do to keep the zombie from killing me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bethany stare at us with a mixture of shock and fear. I think she really thought she was going to die right then, and now she was watching someone else fighting off the death that she thought she was going to have.

Regardless, I needed to deal with the zombie trying to kill me and the, now louder, part of me yelling to rip it apart wasn't particularly helpful.

Maybe I can... I thought until I heard Bethany scream again.

I looked past the struggling zombie to see one of those demons stalking towards Bethany. It's red eyes gleamed with pure cruelty as it stalked forward slowly, savoring every fear-filled scream that ripped itself from Bethany's throat as she crawled away from the demon. It gave a hissing chuckle as it passed me and the zombie, it's eyes filled with disdain whether for me or the zombie, I didn't know.
That's when it hit me.

They really weren't doing this for some rational reason.
All these people were dead because...
...Because they just wanted to.
And now another person I knew was going to die...
Just because they wanted to kill...

I felt my shock and unnatural calm break.
I felt myself fill with RAGE
They needed to die.

I turned my attention to the zombie that was still trying to kill me. I had heard that skulls were surprisingly fragile.
I grabbed the zombie's head with both my hands and Smashed it against the floor.
The zombie offered no resistance, it didn't have enough balance to, and it's head smashed against the ground with a sharp crunch. The zombie stopped moving near instantly.

I shoved it off of me, getting to my knees. I needed a weapon before I could attack the demon.
There!
There was a pistol in a holster on the former zombie's hip.
I grabbed it and aimed it at the demon's head, similarly to how the people in the video games do it. I fired and a deafening shot erupted from the gun with a pain from my arm, unused to the recoil on the gun.
The shot had missed, the bullet digging into the brown carapace near of where I guessed ears would be on a person. It shrieked, stunned from the unexpected pain and noise. It stumbled towards the lockers on the side of the hall.

I Charged at it, intent on killing it. I shouldered it into the lockers, causing a shriek of pain from the monster. I proceeded to grab the thing by it's head and smash it repeatedly against the locker.
I Smashed, and smashed until with a gratifying crack, the demon stopped moving.
I dropped the demon and looked towards Bethany, she was staring at me in shock and a little bit of fear but otherwise she was fine.
I looked at the pistol I had gotten from the zombie. Admittedly I knew nothing about guns except that a pistol was on the low end of the firepower spectrum, but it would kill demons.
That was all I needed to know.

I went to check for more bullets on the zombie but as I did, my mind was turning.
Did I need to kill the demons?
Yes. I felt nothing but anger towards them and unlike earlier, there was no shock to stop me from acting.
Was it a good idea?
Probably not, no. Whether it was a good idea or not was irrelevant. This rage was a part of me and I knew I couldn't let these creatures get away with it. This wouldn't just blow over. The demons needed to die otherwise more people would die.
That meant I couldn't justify not trying to kill the demons.

One important question made me stop. Was this rage really me? It could be some Master who triggered and was directing people to attack these creatures to protect themselves.
It sounded reasonable, but it also sounded wrong. It felt like this rage was asleep inside me for a long time and it was a part of me now that it wasn't buried by other things.
And even if it was a Master, these things were still killing people and if I could save these people then I don't think I'll mind much.
I shook my head. A Mastered person can't check himself for being Mastered. I thought, that was Master tip 101.

In the end it didn't matter much though. Deep down, I needed to kill these demons for what they have already done. I needed to Rip and Tear until my job was done.
I finally found the ammo I was looking for and put it into my Jean pocket. I turned back to Bethany.
"You need to find someplace to hide. It's not safe here" I told her. She just stared at me with her mouth gaping, she still seemed to have problems believing what I had done and if I wasn't so focused on going out and killing the demons then I wouldn't have believed it either.

Who would've thought that Greg Veder would be the one to volunteer to kill the mass murdering demons invading Winslow. But, to be honest, at the moment I didn't care what people thought of me, there were demons to kill and I needed to kill them. As I turned to go, I heard Bethany speak up, "Wait!" she shouted. She spoke softly as she continued. "What are you going to do?"

I turned to face her and showed her the pistol as I pulled the gun's slide back. I looked her in the eyes and said, "I'm going to kill the demons."
Then I turned back around and walked down the hallway, There were demons that needed to die... and I was the one who was going to kill them.

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AN: And here we go, the first chapter to this story i'm writing. I just wanted to say that i don't have any sort of update schedule for this as i can only write when i have the inspiration and will to write (Which isn't too often) and i will be writing different stories as well, such is the fickleness of my muse.

Anyway i hope you enjoyed and feel free to comment.