Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters except for the demons and the two demon summoners.
A Winner is Two: A Survivalist Is You
Meltdown
A casual observer would think the rifle-holding Klokateer was experiencing some sort of epileptic attack as he made his way over to one of the mountainside entrances to the BORED complex. Anybody who knew Klokateers, though, would instantly be able recognize an air-drumming session in progress. As the solo reached a climax, the Klokateer even began to make drumming sounds aloud. "Dokka-do-dokka-do-dok-dok-dok-dokdokdokdok-dokkadokkadokkadodokka-CRASH! DAMMIT! I keep messing that last part up!" Growling, he punched a tree in frustration.
"Isn't it more like 'Dokka-do-dokka-do-dok-dok-dok-dokdokdokdok-dokkadodo-dokkado-dokka-dokka-CRASH?" Deadpool asked as he dropped ass-first out of the tree.
"Hey, yeah, thanks!... uh…" the Klokateer got a good look at Deadpool, and immediately pumped a dozen rounds from his rifle into the merc, pressing him to the ground.
Deadpool, for his part, got up immediately after. "That was terrible! You didn't even get any bullets through to scratch the itch I can't reach on my back!" The Klokateer raised a radio to his face, but Deadpool quickly brought out a katana and lopped the offending hand off; the blade continued through and decapitated the man in one swing. "Your drumming is mediocre!" Deadpool taunted. "Also, I need to get into your pants."
---
Lucius Malfoy had been told there would be somebody waiting for him at the airport when he landed. He had expected a chauffeur or a portkey holder, either a Muggle or a wizard in street clothes. He hadn't expected a smallish man sleeping behind a sign crudely marked "MALFOI." He definitely hadn't expected the man to be an obvious wizard, with a pointed straw hat that obscured his face, a blue robe that obscured the rest of him, glowing yellow eyes, and an almost choking stench of stale potion components about him. He certainly didn't expect the man, once awoken, to spew a broken stream of obscene threats, calm down, cryptically relay a location for Lucius to be at the next morning, and disappear – in view of dozens of Muggles! – in a very loud and smoky variation on Disapparating. Leaving Lucius to find his own way through the city. He had about three-quarters of a mind to quit right then and there.
But no. Lucius had reminded himself just what he was there for, and it hadn't been too hard to find a hotel (in an epic moment of personal willpower, he had restricted himself to a single room in a Marriot). He partook in some local food, slept like a rock after the jet lag, and was at the correct intersection at nine sharp.
"I didn't think you'd have such a high tolerance for bullshit." He turned around. The strange wizard from before was there. His face was still enshrouded in shadow, despite the fact that sun should have been shining directly onto part of it. Lucius decided it had to be a mid-level enchantment on the hat. "That's good; you're gonna need it, with a boss like ours. I'm Black Mage. I was originally in charge here."
"What happened?" Lucius asked, already dreading the answer.
Black Mage's eyes managed to look even shiftier for a moment. "I'm not good at organizational stuff… I'm a lead-by-example kinda guy."
Lucius narrowed his eyes. "What, exactly, does this operation consist of?"
"Well, it's me and some small cult I managed to gain control of… we mostly just lure people into dark alleys and murder them."
Malfoy blanched. "That's all of it? You're… killing people?"
"Yeah, it'll be great. I was told you've killed people in the streets before?"
"Well… yes, but that was completely different, those were just Muggles and…" Lucius became aware that under the shadows, Black Mage was grinning at him.
"That's cute. You think a murderous hate crime is more justifiable than a random killing." Lucius flushed with anger at the statement. "Here's the plain and simple, Manchester – your little moral code that you still keep is twisted beyond redemption by now, so you may as well throw it out. Besides, we don't do totally random killing – at least, not on duty. Here, I'll show you. Make some sort of cute thing in this alley." Black Mage had led them to a narrow alleyway that a few shops and restaurants' back doors opened up to.
"Some sort of… cute thing?"
"Yeah, Vladdy. An illusion, anything, as long as people will come up and see it."
A bit doubtful, Lucius found a cardboard box filled with machine parts in the alley. After some impressive but quick Transfiguration, it was a cardboard box filled with yipping puppies. "Please don't hesitate to show me where you're going with this."
"Yeah, yeah… HEY!" Black Mage's shouting voice made Lucius want to shrivel up and die. "FREE PUPPIES TO A GOOD HOME! OR A BAD ONE! OR A STEW POT! ALL PUPPIES MUST GO!"
It wasn't long before a pair of young women showed up. "Oh! Puppies!" They rushed over to the box at Lucius's feet. "You say they're free?" one of them asked Lucius.
"If you must know-"
"Sure they're free!" Black Mage explained enthusiastically, casting a quick illusion on the alley entrance before turning around to face them. "They won't cost you one cent, and Thunder." He raised a hand encased in what looked like a leather yellow mitten, and a bolt of forked lighting shot from it. Before either girl could react, they were speared by the electricity and fell to the ground, smoking and twitching. "That wasn't the killing part, if you're wondering."
Once he got over the initial surprise and the fresh wave of revulsion he felt for the mage, Lucius couldn't help but admire the spellcraft. This "Black Mage" had to be of pure blood… he was simply too powerful for anything else to be the truth. How old was he, for that matter? Where was he from? This man was an enigma wrapped in a riddle wrapped in a thick layer of dead skunks. "So you've successfully entrapped these young girls… what's next?" he asked disdainfully, dreading the answer.
"Next is the killing. What, did you think I'd rape them? Nah, I just skip right to the stabbity-doo." Both Lucius's revulsion and amazement climbed even further when Black Mage cheerfully grabbed one of the stunned girls by her hair and dragged her, skipping, over to a sheer concrete wall. "Make sure the other one doesn't make any noise, will ya? I don't normally do two of them." Black Mage produced an unusual brown-bladed dagger from his robe, and with a chuckle, drove it into the girl's throat. She stiffened and attempted to gasp, but his choice of target area had cut off her ability to breathe.
Lucius had to look away as the strange man relentlessly continued his assault. Apparently he preferred symbolic rape to the real thing. "Aannnnd boom goes the meteor." Black Mage let her slump to the ground, landing in a red puddle with a wet slap. "You look kinda sick, buddy," he said, wiping the knife off on the girl's left sock – the biggest piece of clothing on her that wasn't already too stained to wipe the blade with. A bit of warmed-to-body-heat chocolate came off with the blood. "Is this your first time working for a demon?"
Lucius swallowed, hardly even thinking as he cast a quick Stupefy on the stirring girl at his feet. "Yes," he admitted. "I thought it hadn't been done for centuries."
"Well, this one's hiring. Before you go thinking, 'oh, he's a demon, he just loves death and violence,' let me set you straight. That's all true, but apparently using chocolate as a murder weapon is the weird condition that boosts this guy's power. It counts as an act of worship or something."
"Does it have to be this… bloody?"
"Fuck no." Black Mage laughed harshly. "Any act of violence or killing works. But as long as I'm getting paid to kill, I might as well do it in the best way possible. Besides, it pisses off the police and gets rumors about me in the papers. Look, you're in this for the money, right? This'll get you rich. And I wouldn't worry about your soul; he's not asking for it in this deal, so he probably has enough. Now are you in, or do I have to stab you too?"
Malfoy ignored the threat. He got the feeling he'd be hearing a lot of them. It's for Draco and Narcissa, it's for Draco and Narcissa… "Alright… I'll join." The words dragged through the air, trailing a wave of miasma.
"Glad to hear it." Black Mage flipped the knife around in his hand, offering out the handle. "Your turn."
---
Sakyo was receiving a viewership report from one of Solidus's men when he heard a distant, "There he is." He quickly looked for a way to make a tactful exit, but no chance came up, and soon Solidus and Ofdensen were standing right behind him. The way the hairs on the back of his neck stood up told him they were furious. "Sakyo…" Solidus said in a voice thick with restrained anger. "Do you have time to chat?"
"Gentlemen," Sakyo said, a bit nervously, as he turned around. His current two bodyguards (a huge, red-suited man with a bizarre sort of sideways Mohawk and an equally-enormous bald man with a blue suit and impossibly bushy blond eyebrows) framed him, but even they seemed wary. "Is there a problem?"
"Is there some reason you thought it was appropriate to leave us out of the loop about Deadpool?" Ofdensen asked.
"I didn't want to worry you," Sakyo said with a smile.
"You're a good liar, Sakyo, but that's a terrible lie. You didn't even, uh, respect us enough to come up with a plausible lie?" Ofdensen shook his head. "Honestly, I don't know why we ever listened to you. Ever."
"Hey, this tournament was a good idea." Sakyo held up the printouts he had been given in his previous conversation. "We're making a killing, especially since your shock Kloks tracked down the major bootleggers. And this is actually stirring up civil unrest all over the place over internet censorship laws. Do you know how much easier it is to expand our holdings in places with civil unrest?"
Ofdensen hesitated. "Will you have Deadpool's head on my table in two days?"
"Yes, definitely. I'll send out my personal guard to do it."
"Would you bet your life on it?" Solidus pressed.
Sakyo bit his lip. "You have to understand who this man is. There's always an uncertainty factor…"
"Why wait two days? I can have Deadpool's head on your table in five minutes!" They all turned to look at a Klokateer who had arrived in their hallway. He had two katanas on his back, a jar of dirt under one arm, and white eyes under his hood. "You know, as long as you show me where your table is and don't mind that the rest of me might still be attached."
"You had me going there for a minute, Sakyo," Ofdensen said testily. "What's your angle, Deadpool?"
Deadpool pulled off the Klokateer's mask to reveal his normal mask underneath. "I have no angle. I'm a straight arrow. I have a guardian angel, though, and that's why your fancy white thing didn't kill me. Funny thing is that I can't die, so that beam of what I've been told was death magic just fizzled."
"How'd you get through the shield?" Solidus murmured. He had drawn the Republican, although it wasn't raised yet.
"That was tricky, but my contract for this job told me that the shield doesn't go underground. So… I swam to the bottom, and I tunneled a few feet into the sea floor mud, and then I dug a tunnel all the way to the island. I could've come up on the other side of the shield, and there would've been less brain damage from constantly drowning for days, but where's the fun in that?"
"Contract? With who?" Sakyo asked.
"Yeah, I'm getting paid for this. I could tell you, but it'd be more dramatic… to SHOW you." Deadpool hefted his jar, and heaved it at the gathered BORED members. Sakyo sidestepped a bit, and it missed them entirely, crashing to the ground and scattering its contents in a meter-or-so-wide area.
"Please tell me you just came to throw a jar of dirt at us," Ofdensen said. Sakyo had a look of dawning horror on his face, while Solidus just looked irritated.
"That's mostly right," Deadpool said, wiggling his fingers. "And there isn't even a disembodied heart in it!"
Sakyo said something incomprehensible under his breath. "What?" Solidus snapped.
"I said it's not dirt," Sakyo replied, turning around. "It's cocoa powder." He found himself facing a demon. A grinning demon with gently curving horns, and fangs, and claws, and piercing yellow eyes, and runic markings. And he was made of chocolate. Standing in a pentagram that seemed to have spontaneously formed from cocoa powder. "An instant summoning circle…"
"Hello, Sakyo. Your hair is looking positively radiant. Are you going to introduce me to your friends?"
Sakyo smiled, although a bead of sweat was trickling down the side of his head. "Of course. Charles, George, this is Death by Chocolate. Death, this is-"
Solidus shoved Sakyo away like a broken toy. "Why are you here?" he snapped at Death by Chocolate. "Your debt has been paid for your services rendered… even though they were then unrendered."
"Not much for pleasantries? That's fine, I can do without them." Death by Chocolate shook his head. "I'm actually here as a representative of Hell today. They wanted to send somebody you're familiar with…" his grin widened. "Anyway, it seems the members of BORED have been charged with crimes against the afterlife. I'm to execute you all so you can be put on trial in Hell. If you're found innocent, which I sincerely doubt, you'll be returned to life promptly at a point in time seconds after you were killed to live out the remainder of your days."
Solidus, Ofdensen, and the small crowd of minions that had gathered around were dumbstruck. "What are the charges?" Sakyo managed to choke out.
"What are the charges," Death by Chocolate repeated, and laughed softly. It was more mentally disruptive than a jackhammer. "Like you don't already know. The charges are thousands of counts of soul destruction, including a few capital cases of destruction of human souls and several cases of conspiracy to destroy human souls. I mean, I'm assuming you know what that thing you have up there in the sky does, because nobody's ever stumbled across this sort of effect by accident. It takes time. Effort." His smile disappeared. "Research. Did it EVER occur to you that maybe those souls were supposed to go somewhere? Maybe, just maybe that's the point of souls in the first place?"
"Hey, demon guy, what about my payment?" Deadpool interrupted.
DbC frowned. "It's waiting back at your warehouse. A decade's supply of chocolate pudding. Five hundred gallons, enough for over a pint a night."
"Deadpool worked for you for pudding?!" Solidus roared.
"I needed somebody immune to that little kill sat of yours. I prefer him to any actually soulless being; he's both more capable and more entertaining. Now… are we going to do this the easy way?" Death by Chocolate opened his right palm, and liquid chocolate began to flow down his arm, quickly coalescing into a sharp, cleaver-like blade.
"Remember that favor you owe me?" Sakyo asked suddenly.
"I don't owe you any," Death by Chocolate answered.
"Not you. Them." He gestured to his body guards. "I'm calling it in. Attack this demon. Destroy him. Your powers are advantageous against his."
They nodded and, with a grunt, shed their human forms like so much rice paper. One transformed into a musclebound, reptilian, orange demon with a constant cloak of flames and a lizardlike frill. The blue-suited man, on the other hand, took on the shape of an icy monster that could best be described as the Incredible Hulk wearing an anthropomorphic penguin costume. "My apologies, sir," the penguin demon said to Death by Chocolate as it cracked feathered knuckles. "But our debt to Master Valdez is worth more than our positions at home."
"Not the easy way, then." Death by Chocolate frowned as if in defeat, but then a chocolate pistol suddenly appeared in his hand and he levied it at Ofdensen. The lizard demon increased its aura, the flames melting the bullets as they passed; Ofdensen flinched, but the bullets didn't break the skin. It looked like he had been hit in the chest with brown paintballs. "No matter… you're not leaving this island alive."
"I'll leave you two to the job," Sakyo said briskly, and ran in the opposite direction. Ofdensen and Solidus followed. "Well, this is a minor setback. Let's keep the pace up, gentlemen; I seriously doubt those two can defeat him." He turned a sharp corner and began racing up a stairway two steps at a time.
"We should hamstring you and leave you to the demon," Solidus growled. "It's your fault we're in this mess."
"Doom and Luthor were the ones who wanted the cannon to destroy souls," Sakyo argued. "They mentioned something about alternate universe versions of their foes also needing to be destroyed."
"You're certainly out of BORED after this anyway." Ofdensen reached the top of the stairs first and held the door open for Solidus and Sakyo (it was almost a reflex). "Why shouldn't we leave you to die?"
"Well, we just dove headfirst into one of my areas of expertise. Tell me, Solidus, how many demons have you played poker with?"
"Just Ocelot."
"Exactly! I know what we should do in this situation."
"What should we do in this situation?" Ofdensen asked, stopping short as they reached an intersection.
Sakyo paused in thought, but a roar from the floor beneath quickly jerked him out of his reveries. "We should split up. You guys will love this idea. He probably prioritizes me the highest, since he knows me and therefore likely hates me."
"Sounds good, but what else?"
"We each go to our transports, and get the hell off this island along with any trustworthy guards or Enforcers we pick up on the way. Everybody else can be left here to rot when we nuke the place."
"We'll need to drop the shield," Ofdensen pointed out.
"Call that in now," Sakyo argued. "We're well compromised already. Check your transport, and all your guards, before takeoff. Make sure they all smell normal. This demon shapeshifts, but he can't change that chocolate smell." There was a small quake. "Oh, and feel free to self-destruct any rooms that still have him in them."
---
Jiraiya looked up from his treetop hideout. There was a visible shimmer around the island. That barrier is down again…
---
Jade felt the immense spike of dark magic long before the ear-popping sensation of the shield falling. I was wondering when something would go terribly, terribly wrong, he thought brightly. He picked up his spear and set it nearer his desk.
---
Tashigi was sitting in the VIP break room, which she had just been given access to. Two of Sakyo's Enforcers were there as well. There was tall, slim man wearing a tattered, hooded black cloak over his sharp grey suit, and a small, stout, plump-faced woman who wore rune-engraved gauntlets with her blue pantsuit. "Something's not right," the man said warily.
"What do you mean?" Tashigi asked. The man ignored her and bolted out of the room.
"I'm sorry, he gets kind of intense," the woman replied, finishing her coffee in one gulp and throwing the mug in the sink. "But there's definitely something wrong. You feel it in your gut, don't you?" Tashigi thought for a second, and nodded. "I'm gonna go find out what's going on. You've got that pirate crew, right? You should go check to make sure they're all right."
---
Death by Chocolate slid back against the floor, his armored spine making a scraping noise against the metal. The ice demon charged forward, and Death threw his sword at it. It dove under the blade and slid belly-first towards him, forcing him to temporarily melt and flow sideways to avoid the attack. He flowed several feet up a wall and reformed in a standing position, behind the ice demon, and created an assault rifle. However, a fireball slammed into his back and partially melted him, ruining the weapon and staggering him. He straightened up, but was still in the process of forming a new weapon when a flaming tail followed up the attack and knocked him flat. "I am so sick and tired of getting double-teamed by a fire and ice duo," he growled, getting to his feet again. He dodged a punch from the ice demon, using the cold radiating off its feathers to solidify again, and morphed one hand into a long spike, which he punched into the creature's heaving side. Ice spontaneously formed in front of the attack as a sort of shield, but he was able to puncture the barrier and still do some damage. "Once was more than enough!"
"You don't exactly have a choice in the matter!" The penguin-esque demon punched him hard, dislodging the spike and stunning him. Death by Chocolate jumped back to gain some space and found himself grabbed out of the air by the reptilian demon, which had flanked him. "Finish him, Yato!"
"I'm gonna eatchu!" Yato slurred with a grin, lifting his foe towards a mouth filled with inch-long fangs.
"Oh, HELL no," Death muttered. A huge, tumor-like growth formed out of his chest, quickly swelling and gaining definition until it was recognizable as a second Death by Chocolate. The second broke off from the first, which quickly went stiff, and fell to the floor. DbC slapped his palm onto his old body, which began to glow. "That's better. Enjoy your meal." He charged toward the ice demon, who put up his fists, but took a running leap over him instead. The penguin wasn't so easily feinted, and brought up a forearm to slam him into the ceiling.
"Kaito, what'd he do?" Yato asked. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the old body went off like a bomb, blowing all the demons in the room to the floor and nearly tearing the hallway apart. As it was, both the floor and ceiling had gaping holes with outward-facing edges, leading up to the floors above and below. The walls had mostly held together, but there were several gashes in them with volcanic gases leaking through. Yato had lost his left hand, and looked more than a little dazed.
"I'd love to stay and party, but this time I've got a job to do." Death by Chocolate was up first and swinging his way into the hole in the ceiling. "Specifically, I've got to go bump off your boss."
"Get back here!" Kaito was hot on his tail, but Death by Chocolate quickly filled the hole in with an inches-thick layer of chocolate. He tapped it again with a grin, enchanting the chocolate to grow barbs if struck. He straightened up, ready to give chase, and instantly received a blow from a morning star to the side of his face, tearing off most of it. He flailed back, covering his face as it regenerated, and turned to meet his attacker head-on.
The hallway was packed with Klokateers, all armed. "We fear not… our mortality!" one chanted.
"We'll serve to the best of our ability!" three others answered.
"We give our lives to our masters! We vow to smite our enemies!" they all roared in unison.
DbC sighed. He conjured up a long, thick staff in both hands, and twirled it with a flourish, adding a blade on the end to make it a naginata. Once people start chanting, there's just no reasoning with them.
---
Shadow looked up with passing interest as the shield dropped before turning back to the rubble he was shifting through. Travis had supposedly brought more stuff with him than any other Enforcer, and not all of it had been recovered with him after the fight with Membrane, so where was it? All Shadow had found so far was a few torn comics and some punctured beer and soda cans. "What the hell is this?" Shadow picked up a pair of goggles with the rubber strap burned through. These must've been Membrane's. Sighing, he tossed them away. Cleanup duty sucked. He reminded himself never to let Solidus catch him moping around HQ again 'when he could be out doing something constructive.'
Shadow had just found something that looked interesting when he heard a garbled message over his walkie-talkie. There was some garbled static, but he was able to make out "…port to HQ…. peat, all troops report… Q, IMMEDIATELY."
"Sounds like those idiots need me hanging around after all." Shadow pulled a white cylinder loose from its place wedged between a pair of two-by-fours. It was one of Travis's beam katana. "Tsubaki" was stenciled onto the side. Shadow found the power switch and set it to 'on', and the 'receiver' cap extended out for a few feet. A few small antennae unfolded sideways from the handle, acting like a guard to the blade. Pressing the switch a notch further to 'armed' caused a blue blade of energy to extend from the hilt to a receiver piece. "Interesting." He swung the blade and swung at a piece of rebar sticking out of the ground. It fell in half… and then the lower half began to spray a fountain of blood into the air like the stump from a severed head. Even more bizarrely, money began to spray from it as well. Shadow was dumbstruck. "What the f-"
"Shadow." Ofdensen's voice came through the walkie-talkie crisp and clear. "Get your ass over here or I'll have you skinned, stuffed, and mounted. This is important, alright? Over."
It wasn't like Ofdensen to make threats. Something was definitely up. Shadow ignored the bleeding rebar as it burst into ashes, choosing instead to sheathe the blade and pack it up. He stuck it in an empty pistol holster and skated off toward HQ.
End of Chapter
Let the Finals Begin
Yeah, so... Death by Chocolate. If any of you don't like that I'm reintroducing the OC host of the first tournament, I just want to assure you that I thought about it long and hard. You don't need to actually use him in any of your fights - his effects are far-reaching, but he's still only a human-sized creature. It's entirely possible not to run into him in this storyline.
I also introduced Black Mage, as he appears in the webcomic 8-bit Theatre! Yeah... Lucius Malfoy's new job, it turns out, is to administer a cult that exists to boost DbC's power through the magic of chocolate murder. I like the scene, but I had to write Lucius's dialogue a few times. Even if he's been humbled, it's still hard to get him sounding right. Also, Black Mage's whole shtick is over the top audacity, so if you don't like that, I don't know what to tell you. Here, he survived the apocalypse of his own world by overselling his own soul to the point where he was simultaneously due on several levels of hell, and was left on Earth so that he could be used to do the bidding of pretty much any demon that needed him. If you were wondering.
All the adoptable Enforcers get a little scene, although Shadow's is longer because it feeds into the chapter where I adopt him.
Yato's definitely suffered a debilitating injury, but he's by no means dead yet. Demons are tough fuckers.
