Well I think I just wasted that week off I was talking about. Don't judge me; finals for school are stupid and school in America is stupid. This is a universal fact, and it carries on into the college life. I wasn't even able to write all that I wanted to for this chapter, so I've decided to cut it and leave it for next month's update here. This is probably a third of what I had planned, but I don't have the time to make it for this week, so an action heavy chapter is what you get.
As a warning to those who read all my stories, the next chapter for every story other than Betrayed will be a multi scene chapter. There will be jumps in time through each chapter, and for those that jump from one day to the next, I will mark it so you know. Those that don't have a date on them, I ask you to know are taking place over the same day.
I say this now because my first week after winter break will be the chapter for A New Starting Point, the long awaited return, and I have it planned to be scenes from over five days of the same week. I want to put a lot into that story and push myself to cover more ground in these next weeks to power through the worlds and concepts I present so we're all on the same page.
And as a last thing, for those who read this chapter, I would like to hear what you think of my action writing. I'm going into creative writing as a major and I plan to use it as a profession, and my stories on this site are meant as practice to better my fiction writing, while using works from others as a basis to practice with. I would appreciate any comments you have as to how it reads so I know how to make it better for this and the other stories and I write. Thank you in advance to all that give me feedback.
And for those of you who like reading PJO, I will be writing a Friendship oneshot next week alongside Child of Magic's next chapter, so expect two updates next week since I have the time. The scene in my head as been in here for a long time, but I could never convince myself to write it out and put it here. Now I have the time and energy to make it happen.
Enjoy.
J watched the group as they moved, the four men huddled together in the dark streets of New York. Not one made a sound other than that of their footsteps, and not one tried to make conversation with the others. They moved quietly into the night, a book pressed to each of their chests, and the hoods of their jackets resting over their faces. That was they group he was searching for.
He moved silently across the roof and jumped to the other side of the street, landing on the building mirrored, watching the men following without the knowledge of doing so. His gaze peered over the ledged, taking note of their movements and squinting as they entered the building he stood atop of. That wasn't right.
J took the letter from his pocket, reading over the details provided. His eyes flicked up beyond the paper, staring into the glowing sign of the Red Circle several blocks directly ahead, the place he should have been following them to. He read the note over again, comparing the pictures to the brief glimpses of their faces he could make. They were the group he was looking for. They just took a detour, of sorts.
The note was stuffed back into his pocket and he turned on his heel and stalked over to the door leading down into the hotel. His hand curled around the hilt of his sword, easing it out of the sheath and swiping it in a blur of silver before easing it back in. He pulled the door by the handle, catching the metal used to lock it in place as it slid out, and slipped inside without another noise.
His bare feet tapped each step as he descended floor by floor until he reached the most notable one. From the window in the stairwell door, he could see the seven men spread out down the hall, each decorated in a suit and a blade, short or long. Two stood against the wall, on either side of a door, while the rest were spread about to roam and space out about the hall.
J took a breath as he surveyed each man, stepping his feet further and further from the door until his heel touched the wall. He fell into a lunge, sliding his fingers between the handle and the door while the other hand gripped his sword. He kept his eyes on the window, darting from man to man, as the energy in his body began to vibrate.
Three.
Two.
One.
The door swung open faster than the seven could register, and the man that stood beyond it was gone faster than they could acknowledge him. They weren't fast enough to see him draw his sword. They weren't fast enough to see the glow that shone from beneath both. They weren't fast enough to keep their heads.
J took another breath as he reached the end on the hall. Steam blew from his body in clouds, and the head in his hand twitched in his hand, blood pouring from the absence of a neck. He dropped it into the lap it once called its own. Sighing, J drew his sword from the wall and wiped the blood on his sleeve as he turned back to the rest of the hall. Bodies were still tumbling, following after the heads they had lost. But now the door was free to approach.
He tiptoed his was past the corpses and their pools of blood staining the hallway walls and carpet floor. When he approached the door previously guarded, he placed his hands upon it. He spaced them apart, gliding them along in an arching motion until they were at polar ends. He lifted his palms away, pressing his fingertips into the door, ready to slide them together and break in. J moved his body forward, bending his elbows and flexing his hands and –
ZZZTT.
J froze in his place, staring down the door as power rolled by him. The bodies beside him shook and jumped before tearing apart at the skin and flesh and bone and fluttering away through the vents, leaving behind J and pools of blood they had created.
J let out a breath as the pressure of power disappeared, letting his shoulders drop. Then he shoved the door open.
Though he had drained most of his Light source dashing through the hallway, J could still draw his sword and follow the door flying inside, crashing into someone and interrupting the ritual taking place. The other three in the room moved as fast as they could, but J had already made ground and shot his sword through the throat of the man closest to him.
As the other two men in fine condition took hold of a sword, J had ripped his sword from the side of the man's throat and rushed the second. The second man raised his sword to run Percy's guide through, but J used his own blade to whack it aside and keep advancing. The man contorted his face in worry and tried to block a slash to his chest, but instead took a slash that stole his fingers from the knuckles up.
The man stumbled away and down and screamed, losing the grip on his sword and using his other hand to clutch the bleeding stump to his chest. The only other unharmed man charged J as the warrior turned to face him. The man swung his sword down upon J's head, aiming to slice it in half. Instead of meeting skull, he met hand, specifically one that caught his and stopped the sword short from touching J's hair. He struggles against the glowing grip digging into his skin, but got nowhere, and instead got a sword piercing through his wrist and lunging further to meet his eye, shooting out the back of his head.
J kept his grip on the man's hands, drawing his sword out of skull and joint and sheathing his sword away once more. He let the man's hands go and allowed him to fall to the carpet in a mess. J payed little attention to the man caressing his bleeding hand and took a look at the room around him.
Aside from the obsidian black table they must have brought in earlier, they had emptied the hotel room of its usual wears. Beds, T.V., cabinets; all gone. The lights were turned off, in the room, leaving the only source of light for the ritual to the lamp they had set in the middle of the table before it was knocked off. Taking a look again at the table, J noticed the books spread about it, flipped to various pages that must have been for the ritual the men were performing. He approached one of the books moved about the table when the door came a-knockin' and flipped through the pages, unable to read the language he didn't recognize.
The man sandwiched between door and table stirred, groaning and trying to lift himself as he lifted the lids of his eyes. His rise stopped as his vision returned and was met with the sight of a palm staring him down from an inch away.
"Hakai."
J's arm recoiled as the man's head exploded with part of the door and table. He closed the book, giving the cover a once over before taking it in hand and walking over to the man seething in pain on the floor. His foot shot up to meet the curled man's shoulder, sending him sprawling on his back, screaming again as J stomped his foot down on the man's thumb-only hand.
"Since you're still alive and in no position to fight back, I suggest you start explaining." J crouched down to the man and rested his other knee on the guy's chest. Said man tried to retaliate and throw a punch with his good hand, only for it to be caught and stuck in J's grip. "Why are you here?"
"Y-you think I…I'm just gonna taaah!" J pressed the ball of his foot harder on the man's palm, shooting more blood out of his knuckles.
"Yes I do. Least then your soul can move on to the afterlife. Now answer my questions. Why are you here?"
The man breathed heavily through his grunts and his teeth. "You…you know why we're here..!"
"An awakening/summoning ritual for your superior. Yes, I know. Why are you at this hotel? The last time you people used one, it was in Russia, and it took the lives of your people too. I thought learning from mistakes was something people did."
The man looked up to the figure staring down in his eyes, unable to keep his own open while being interrogated. He let out a spit of blood to the side, and then another, and then a chuckle. A laugh. A grimace. And a laugh again. "Do you…truly believe…we would perform it…here?.." a breath escaped his lips, a lightness to it that a laugh couldn't perform.
"No. You planned to do it somewhere else. Why move it here?" J dropped his free hand to the floor, sliding it along the carpet away from him and the man, and leaned his body down further to the man's.
"Who said we moved…" The man coughed up more blood onto the stained carpet and smiled in his madness and suffering. A quake broke through the room, shuddering everything. J's hand caught the hilt of the sword fallen beside him and slashed it through the man's neck before anything more could happen.
J picked himself up and turned his body to the window as the quake calmed, and watched. As chains dropped from the sky and shot out the street and sidewalk. As they connected and whipped about. As they coiled and constricted around the Red Circle.
J clutched the book to his chest and rushed the window, pressing his palm against the glass and shattering it clean with some of the power Perseus blessed him with. He placed one foot on the sill and jumped out, turning his body in the process and forming a ball of flames in his hand to throw back into the room as he spiraled eight floors back down to the surface.
J cemented himself into the pavement, wasting more of his energy pool to soften his landing and clutched his hand to his side. He ignored the explosion from above, the flames and burning bits flying out the windows, as he pulled three drachmas from his pocket. He pressed them to his sword and clothes and the book in hand, having them all disappear from his person and in return getting a civilian friendly flannel shirt and jeans to cover his lean form.
J leaped from the stone free and turned on his feet to the club before rushing past the falling flames to it. He shoved the fleeing civilians to the side, approaching the building closer and closer. He slowed behind the crowd that kept watch from the distance but hesitated not and pushing them aside to make way, sparing a glance to see the condition the Red Circle was undergoing.
Chains decorated in smoke and electricity that shouldn't be red but was anyways curled around the upper half of the building, pressing into metal and stone and sign. Sparks and rocks and steel fell in pieces around the building, but J took that into little consideration as he made it through the ocean of people and kept his forward momentum. He ignored the shouting of the officers trying to save all civilian lives they could, and dived through the hallway entrance to the dance floor, taking a full stop upon his arrival.
J kept his eyes on the chains webbing the open area of the second balcony and the bodies entangled in them. He could see arm outstretched towards the chains peering over the railings, but they were by no means meant for saving the poor captured souls dangling before them.
He looked into the corner of his floor and darted to the doorway to the side, bursting through and bouncing up the stairs to the floor above. He crashed through the doors there, startling the two men lined up in front of his and sent the first of the two down on his face with a solid punch. The other made moves to press forward against J, but was met instead with a torrent of flames shooting from J's arm.
J flicked his wrist to turn off the jet of fire and hummed in annoyance at the burning sleeve of his shirt, though he made no notion to stop or remove it. He turned his body to the rest of the balcony, finding six more men dressed like the two he attacked, dressed like the men at the hotel. More disposable mortals for the monsters to use. He couldn't hear what was being said too clearly, but J could see the man directly across from him yelling at the other men around him, who all turned away from their positions in the ritual and made way towards Perseus' warrior.
J stood his ground as the first man rushed him with a knife directed at his chest, and spun his body around to push the man's arm out of the way with his own when the knife was close enough. His other arm shot up and hooked his elbow into the man's chin and he spun, knocking him solid with the joint. He kept his spiral momentum, grabbing the man's wrist and shoulder and forcing him down to his knees so one of J's could come up to meet the man's elbow.
He swiped the knife from the man's grasp as the arm bent in the opposite direction of normal and threw him back by the shoulder into the man coming in to follow up for his comrade. J followed forward, lunging the knife into the first man's throat, and with the pressure on his shoulder shoved him down again and sprung himself over. The knife cut through the neck into the air, flipping upside down in J's grip before falling like an ice pick into the second man's forehead.
J landed, crouched above the two men, stealing from them the knives they had and turning 'round to the three men approaching from the other side, and the knife in the air that lead them. J turned his body and leaned out of the knife's way, allowing it to fly past, while keeping his own gaze on the men coming to him. A second knife twirled through the air, and J moved his body the other way, throwing his hand back after the knife with a stolen one of his own. His hand launched forward, and with it a knife to mimic the ones sent to him. The man leading the three moved out of the way in time to dodge the knife, but it kept going and found itself impaled in the shoulder of the man behind him.
The scream of his partner took his attention away from J, long enough to distract him from the knife flying at him until it dug into his knee. The man curled his body down, letting out his own startled scream, and moved his hands to the knife in him. But a foot beat his pace, stomping down on the knife and pushing it deeper, and knee met his face before he could scream to the extra silver in him.
J reeled his arm back and shot it down into the second man's face as gravity pulled him down with the first. Both feel in pain of their knife wounds and cranial concussions, and J landed between them, moving his attention to the last of the three men. Said man threw a punch to J's face, but the man swatted it away with a hand of his own, stepping back through the bodies as he did so. The man threw punch after punch, and J would either hit them out of the way or step to the side and back to evade them. He reeled his arm back like J did, and instead of retreating, J advanced. The man threw his fist forward, but found a foot connecting with his face before his fist could connect with anything.
J stood paused in his spin hook kick as he brought the man's face against the chain-sprouting wall, watching the man's body slack and slide down to the corner where floor and wall met. He brought his leg back, bent at the knee and hovering in the air beside his other leg, before shooting it backwards and colliding with the face of the man he punched at the start, sending him back down when he tried to get back up.
J planted his feet on the ground, turning his head enough to look at the man across from the corner of his eye. His eyes were wide and his arm lower than it was originally and, from what J could tell, he was shaking in his boots. J took a step, just one step, to start his way over, and almost stumbled as power poured into the club and washed over him.
Pathetic. J froze as the voice rumbled and rippled the pools of blood in front of him. I was told you men could get me dozens of souls in one night, and here I find but a handful before me and a barefoot bastard knocking you down one by one. I can't even get to the souls right outside to make up for your worthless efforts. You've locked me in here.
"Lord Chaos, please!" J could hear the man from the other side screaming at the top of his lungs, despite the pressure of power in the building, but he kept his eyes on the bodies dissolving in front of him like those in the hotel hallway did. "Please, forgive me! We did everything you asked of us! We changed our course and used the four men to draw his attention away like you said it would! We were able to summon you and give you souls! You told us we had no reason to worry!"
And yet it seems I wasn't told who or what our enemy was. He is far more capable than his kind should be. A scream and two took J's attention to the webbing of chains, as he watched the captives entangled in the air melt at the flesh, muscle and bone, falling to the floor like water. You were to tell me everything and you couldn't even do that.
"My lord, please –!"
Silence. With his attention in the direction of the man, J kept his position as a spectator as he burst into an array of red sparks, tearing parts of his surroundings as he went away. I have no need to forgive the worthless. I need the capable and competent if this is to be done at all.
And you. J shot himself straight and stood still as the voice acknowledged him, if the power in the air around his lungs had anything to do with it. It stood still over him, watching him, judging him. Goodbye.
J stumbled forward and caught the railing as the club shook, and found himself unable to act anymore as the upper half of the club was torn off and dragged into the sky, eaten by the night above.
