"DIE ALREADY SO I CAN TAKE YOUR STUFF."
- Bandit Highwayman, Skyrim
"I love it!"
- Gene, God Hand
Gene was rather annoying in how he insisted on fighting the legions of Hell and its bottomless pit of depravities, but none of that mattered. He was about to get the point.
Gene charged into the heart of the devil's circus after going all Streets of Rage on the imps at the tent entrance. Shannon was waiting for him in the spotlight in the center of the ring. Behind her, a pair of red iron double doors sealed off a private room in the back of the tent. Their High Gothic architecture brought an air that was as elegant as it was morally sketchy.
"Glad you could make it, flesh worm," the demoness said to the demon hunter with a hungry smile. "I'm not supposed to tell you what's going on behind Door Number 1, but I'll give you a little hint."
Shannon held out her staff so the thorny heart-shaped sigil at its head was facing Gene. The eye in the sigil's center conjured a floating image like the dimly glowing lens on a magic film projector. The image was hazy at first, but focused into three distinct elements. One was sharp and black. One was rippled and red. One was shapely and flesh-toned.
The hovering illusory window showed Olivia stripped of all her modesty and sitting in a tub formed in the palm of a giant obsidian demon hand reaching out of the ground, getting the Elizabeth Bathory treatment when it was probably (but not entirely clearly) against her will. The battle maiden lingered in dreary half-unconsciousness as she bathed up to her neck in the blood of maidens even less fortunate than herself. Every passing second she rested in the grim ablution was another second of unholy magic creeping through her pores and scouring away at her soul. There was nothing to shackle her down or block her from simply standing up and walking out of the black stone basin, but she was either too entranced or too relaxed to escape her condemnation. It was apparently sleepy time in the Satanic Excessive Machine.
"Mmh," Olivia murmured weakly as she stretched her back. The round upper elevations of her chest rose an inch out of the basin and glistened with crimson moisture as her body shifted positions, then slowly sank back below the murky surface as she exhaled and her shoulders relaxed. Her hands and feet were resting in the deepest part of tub like lead anchors so only her head and portions of her collarbone were always visible above the waterline. The details of her birthday suit were obscured as vague rippling lines under the dark red death ichor filling the tub.
"We've been taking good care to make sure she's immersed in defilement, but she still has some of her innocence left," Shannon explained with a wry smirk. The hovering projection disappeared as she pulled her staff away.
"She's only been soaking for a few hours. You might be able to save her from catching a bad case of immortality if you're fast enough."
"I swear if anything happens to her, I'll strangle you with your popped up collar and make you eat your own horns!" Gene threatened in retaliation. Shannon calmly shrugged it off.
"The rules are simple," she explained in a voice oozing with suggestive charm. "You give us the God Hand, and we give you the girl back. Unless you want your tasty little friend to become a midnight snack, I suggest you give up now."
Gene gave his response by raising his fists. Shannon snickered out of the corner of her mouth, anticipating that he wasn't going to play nice.
The circus ring became a fighting arena as Gene charged at his demonic opponent. After he finished doing the Double Dragon thing with her, he left her sprawled on the floor and ran straight for the red bordello doors. Shannon secretly lifted her head from the ground while she was playing dead and shot a telling vile grin behind his back.
Gene punched the doors open and ran into the back room shouting Olivia's name. But to his surprise, she was nowhere to be seen. Instead, he found the demon hand sculpture completely emptied and in a very different pose. It was lifted up in a raised fist and giving him the middle finger.
"What the…?" Gene blurted in a combination anger and bewilderment.
The confusion in Gene's mind was only beaten by the excruciating pain suddenly searing through his rib cage. Blood spouted from of his mouth as the head of a double-edged hatchet exploded out of his sternum. Gasping in hysteria, he glanced over his shoulder and saw the lovely little set of tits and axe standing behind him out of the corner of his eye.
Olivia was dried off, fully dressed in her standard thigh boots get-up, and decidedly inhuman. Black serpent runes wrapped all the way up her body underneath her clothing like reeds branding her as Stygian mermaid. The pendant hanging from her necklace was replaced with a living eyeball covered in tiny obsidian spikes. The back of her miniskirt lifted and shuffled softly as a slender leathery tail with a heart-shaped tip uncurled from below her spine. Her devilish red and gold eyes twinkled with insanity, and she grinned with canines sharpened like ivory daggers.
Shannon was a liar. She'd been given her baptism by blood yesterday.
"Sorry, Gene," the demon Olivia giggled into the back of his ear. "You didn't make the cut."
She yanked the hatchet out of his back with vicious impossible strength and let his dying body crumple to the floor. He stuck around just long enough to see tiny albino gremlins crawling out of white fur lining her jacket and growing into twisted feline creatures. They swarmed around him on the floor and worked together to position his right arm so it was stretched out at his side.
Olivia lifted her axe over her head with psychotic intentions. The sound of sharpened steel cutting through air reached Gene's ears as a long black shadow swiftly descended on his shoulder. She hacked off his God Hand like a chef cleaving through a roast ham with a single clean stroke.
Author's note: Did you hear about the one about how 80s icon Rainbow Brite was in a PS2 game?