Chapter 1: Prologue
A hooded boy is seen walking through the halls of an unknown building, a defeated and furious look marring his face, his bright green eyes narrowed. His unzipped gray jacket softly waved in the air as he walked, covering a loose black shirt. A set of fingerless gloves covered his clenched fists. A pair of blue jeans covered his lower body, along with a pair of brown boots. Completing his attire were protective pads sewn into his clothes, covering his boots, knees, shoulders, elbows, and the backs of both hands.
"Nothing is true. Everything is permitted."
He pulled down his hood, revealing his brown hair. He seemed to be in his mid-teens.
"So why believe anything? Why not do whatever you please?"
He turned a corner, facing down a long stretch of hallway.
"There's supposed to be a deeper hidden meaning behind those words, one that helps to better ourselves and understand our society, and its faults."
He soon reached the end, stopping at a pair of metal doors.
"But when there's a gun at your head, or a blade at your neck, does it really matter?"
He twisted a knob and pushed open the door.
"Every society, every person, has their own morals and shades of gray, and how to act upon them."
He walked inside, staring at all the body bags lining the room.
"But still, regardless of how you define good and evil..."
He looked at one of the bags on a table next to him.
"... There are some lines that should never be crossed."
He heard something snarling and banging, and saw another bag a couple yards away thrashing around. He reached into his coat and took out a pistol, shooting the bag until it flopped back on the table, motionless. He slowly placed the gun back in his coat.
"But that's not enough to stop some people."
Suddenly, the bag next to him also started moving. He flicked his left wrist, a blade appearing below his palm. He thrust the blade into the bag, the remains inside going silent. He pulled it out, his blade now covered in blood. He wiped it off on the bag and retracted it.
"Why is it that some people feel the need to play god, to break the laws of nature in order to replace them with their own demented sense of order?"
More bags began to move around, moaning and growling. A few minutes later, the boy walked out of the room. Bloodstains and body parts could be seen littering the room behind the door.
"The dead should stay dead, and those who tamper with that should join them."
He turned around, looking at the doors in disgust.
"That is the life I signed up for, or maybe I should say was dragged into."
He walked away, as fast as he could.
"The life of a member of the Assassin Brotherhood, and now a butcher of the undead."
He walked out a door, exiting the building, and going towards the end of a cliff, watching the sunset over the horizon.
"Had my past gone just a little differently, I'd likely be quite naïve to the reality of the world, or possibly even dead."
Memories flashed through his mind.
"13 years ago, when I was only four, I was an orphan on the streets. No idea how I ended up like that, or even how I was alive with no one at my side."
A memory showed a younger version of the boy, dirty and dressed in nothing but some shorts and a shirt a few sizes too big.
"I had nothing to my name. Actually, that's not completely accurate, as I didn't even have a name. I had a surprising amount of nicknames though. Usually 'Punk,' or 'Trash,' or 'Worthless Piece of Shit.'"
Another memory showed the boy running from a bakery with a loaf of bread in his hand, the owner chasing him with a rolling pin.
"Then one day, as I was digging through a trashcan some mutt had knocked over, I was given salvation."
The next memory showed the boy kneeling at the entrance to an alleyway. Standing above him was a brown-haired bearded man in an ornate suit and small set of armor, who bore a pitying look towards the boy.
"On that day, I was given a new chance at life by Wulfric Orcus, a member of the Templar Order, and the man I would call Dad."
Wulfric lead the boy to large fancy house.
"He cleaned me up. He gave me food, a home, a family, a purpose, and a name. Tatsumi. Sleeping Dragon, a name which implied an abundance of untapped power and potential."
Tatsumi, all cleaned and dressed up, was shown around the area.
"I learned about what he was a part of. The Templars. Those who desired peace through order and control. And their enemies, the Assassins, who they described as 'radical terrorists who think they can solve all the worlds problems with the flick of a blade.'"
He sat at a desk, listening as the Templars spoke.
"They were uptight and strict, but they were family."
The memories dispersed, and Tatsumi clenched his fist.
"Until the day my image of them was shattered."
The next memory showed Wulfric motioning Tatsumi away, hiding him in a closet.
"I'll never forget that night. It's as vivid in my head as when it happened. I was eight. It was stormy and rainy out late September. The moment everything good was taken from me, and I could do nothing but watch it happen."
Tatsumi's eyes were wide with horror as he saw a group of armed Templars force his father to the ground, lying prone. With Wulfric cursing them and screaming obscenities the whole time, a broadsword was forced into his back.
"The one thing keeping me from crying out and revealing myself was my unimaginable and unbearable shock. They soon left, not even bothering to search the house. I exited the closet, walking over to my father's near-dead body."
As Tatsumi walked over, his father gave him a pained smile, slowly reaching into his coat.
"His last act was to hand me a gun, and leave me with some parting words."
"Aim for the head."
"About three minutes later, I heard voices outside, and they weren't happy. I panicked and ran out the backdoor into the woods."
Tatsumi was running through the woods, the gun in hand. He stumbled and fell.
"I was young and never really trained my body at all, also tired and wracked with grief. Even the gun in my hands felt more like a lead crate. I barely got any distance before I keeled over."
He attempted to stand, but paused when he saw some shuffling in the bushes.
"What happened next would be my first step into a new nightmare."
Instead of an animal, what at first seemed to be a person stumbled out, but their skin was gray, their eyes were glazed over, and they had multiple leaking wounds on their body.
"I managed to stand and leap to the side just as that 'thing' lunged at me. It didn't take me too long to realize that even if it was human once, it certainly wasn't anymore."
Tatsumi sat in shock, then looked down at the gun in his hands.
"It was at that moment I remembered my Dad's final words."
He lifted the gun as the walking corpse began stumbling towards him again.
"I gripped the handle as tight as possible, aimed as carefully as I could, and fired. With how powerful the blast was, I'm amazed the gun didn't fly out of my hands
Tatsumi cringed at the kickback of the gun in his hands, then watched in horrified shock as the gunshot blasted the zombie's head to bits.
"I didn't have time to feel sick to my stomach, as I had a whole new problem to worry about."
More zombies started to appear at random from the woods.
"It was probably the sound of the shot that attracted them. I only managed to get six more shots out of that gun before I was out. Turns out Dad had given me a 50 caliber Desert Eagle Magnum. All power, no capacity. Certainly explains why that zombie's entire head went boom."
The zombies came in closer.
"They were coming in from every direction, and I was out of ammo. I thought I was going to die, but suddenly..."
More gunshots rang out, downing several undead. Several hooded men and women armed with blades and guns appeared to take out the remaining zombies. One of them helped Tatsumi to his feet and took him away from the massacre.
"The shock and trauma was too much, and I passed out during the escape."
Tatsumi was shown lying in a cot, slowly opening his eyes.
"When I came to, I thought it was all a bad dream, but when saw my father's empty gun on a bed next to me, and an Assassin walking into my room, reality hit me like a anvil."
Tatsumi was sitting on the cot, the Assassin placing a hand on his shoulder.
"Everything was explained to me. The Templars had gotten their hands on a Piece of Eden, an technologically advanced relic that no one today truly understands the inner workings of. They interact with the neurotransmitters in the brains of those surrounding, causing all sorts of effects. Apparently, the Templars had decided to experiment on one to see if it could reactivate the brains of the recently deceased, and combine it with some biological science to restart the body as a whole, essentially resurrecting the dead. Technically they succeeded, but instead of creating some elixir of life or philosopher's stone, they created the single most deadly virus that would ever exist, one spread through bodily fluid contact that turned people into walking corpses who think of nothing other then sating their eternal hunger for living flesh and brain matter: the CRISIS Virus, or Cannibalistic Reanimating Insatiable Starvation Inducing Syndrome Virus. Don't ask me why, someone probably just really wanted this thing to have a cool acronym. Since the Templars didn't get the results they wanted, they decided to work with what they could get, and use the virus in biological warfare. My father was horrified at this, and was killed after being discovered leaking info on this to the Assassins. As for the zombies that appeared in the woods behind my house, no one really knows why they were there. Maybe the Templars placed them there in case my Dad escaped through the back, or maybe it was just fate. Either way, it wasn't long before the entire village was crumbling to the ground."
Now he was sobbing, the Assassin holding him tightly in comfort.
"That last bit was a mouthful, so long story short, after a lot of crying and grieving, I trained under the Assassins, mentally and physically prepping for the day I would finally be able gut the fucker who brought about this disaster, along with anyone who dared to stand in my way, dead or alive."
The memories faded out, and Tatsumi was back in the building, in an ornate office-like area looking over potential assignments and assassinations.
"It's been seven years since then, and a whole lot has changed. We've had to seriously upgrade our game in order to keep up. More of us started studying ballistic, explosive, and incendiary weapons, with the possibility of stealth no longer being an option growing with each mission. Even our strongest weapon, Eagle Sense, has become more underpowered over time, seeing as it can't detect whether or not a person has been infected, and is quite a moot ability when backed against a wall by swarms of walking corpses that possess no emotions or real thoughts. Even more so, while the Assassins do consider each other family, many have become more emotionally detached, not wanting to risk hesitating if an ally becomes infected."
He selected one and walked out.
"It was already bad, but there was one event that drove home just how devastating it could be. The sight of the first, and so far, only major outbreak."
More memories appeared. This one showed Tatsumi and a few other Assassins traveling through the woods.
"In the mountain and forest areas nearby Corvid City, one of the few places in existence where the Assassins had a decent foothold in the area, there was a mansion we believed to be a secret lab for producing CRISIS, and I volunteered to investigate with a few others who had been around longer. But when we got there, swarms of undead in the area caught us by surprise."
Tatsumi was shown running towards the mansion alone, a horde of zombies on his tail.
"I was the only one who survived, and in a cruel twist, I had to take cover in the exact same mansion I was there to investigate."
Tatsumi was walking through the mansion, discovering several traps and hidden passages along the way, and killing several undead and scientists.
As I got deeper and deeper into the mansion, I saw just how horrifying things were getting. I killed everyone and everything in that madhouse, and to my horror, discovered that I was too late..."
Now he was reading a monitor in a laboratory.
"... The virus had already been delivered to the city."
About 3 Months Ago...
In a deeply forested area was a white mansion, several undead wandering around. Suddenly, a figure burst through the front door, wearing a black hooded overcoat and a mask covering his face from the nose down. He had a katana sheathed on his back, which he used when one of the zombies got too close. He placed it back in his sheath, dodging the other zombies as he ran into the woods. When he made it out of the forest, he pulled down his hood and mask, revealing himself to be Tatsumi. He made his way up a hill, and saw a city in the distance. A few areas were on fire, and screams of panic and horror could be heard. Tatsumi gazed upon the scene in shock and grief.
"No. No, no, no."
He took off down the hill to make his way towards the disaster area
Deathstalker: City of Nightmares
Here's the prequel I promised. Like I stated before, this will be a Xover/Mashup of Akame ga Kill, Assassin's Creed, Resident Evil, and Bloodborne. If you couldn't tell, Corvid City is based off of Raccoon City, and this story will draw heavily from Resident Evil 2 and 3. Bloodborne references won't appear in this story. Those will appear in something I have planned for later. Will it be in Akame ga Kill's timeline? Will it be another break-off story? You'll have to wait and see. As for what Tatsumi experienced in the mansion, take the original Resident Evil, mix it with the original House of the Dead, take away the monsters, throw in a lot more hack n' slash and stealth action, and there you go.
Also, I know this may seem a little rushed, and also kind of a cop-out not telling exactly what occurred in the mansion, but you need to realize that this story was specifically created to explain and develop Tatsumi's character. What happened in the mansion is nothing that would mentally scar him any worse than he already is. It's when he goes into the city that things will get really ugly.
Finally, a disclaimer:
Akame ga Kill is owned by Square Enix.
Assassin's Creed is owned by Ubisoft.
Bloodborne is owned by Fromsoftware.
Resident Evil is owned by Capcom.
Good night everybody!
