Final chapter: Fission Mailed.
Location: Chernobyl, URSS
December 10th, 11:23 A.M.
The ultimate clash between evil and just-trying-to-get-home had left Chernobyl's power plant looking like the result of a world war, with some collapsed buildings, burning vehicles and piles upon piles of mangled corpses. Only six pairs of legs were left standing upon the chaos, without a shadow of doubt true legends of the battlefield. Well, five pairs and a spare one. Hilda had already cut one of the Sahelanthropus' legs, forcing it to stand on one of its legs whilist supporting itself on a building.
"Will you give up already?" Hilda asked. She was answered by a short burst of bullets, which her blade deflected easily. "What are you fighting for, anyway? Nobody loves you!"
The upright Metal Gear howled in response and hurled itself at its oponent, shooting missles and bullets in a last ditch attempt at proving its self-worth. The demonic maid sadly wasn't born with the ability to care for pathetic beings, however, and simply leaped at it and slashed forward. The sword made a sqeuaky-clean cut through the machine, causing each of its sides to fall apart and leave her unharmed. Unlike the other, zombie-like creatures, the Sahelanthropus did stop moving after a while.
Combat results:
TIME: 0: 01: 34.03
BP: 12
ZANDATSU: 1
LONGEST COMBO: 3
KILLS: 1
COMBAT RANK: B
"What rank, did you say?"
COMBAT RANK: S
After solving the little score issue, Hilda spared a glance at the other two fighters on her side. Tojo was (incorrectly) writing the kanji of his name through a building using Ruby's head as a giant and brutal paint brush, while Cinder had pinned Oga down to a wall with several arrows and now teased him about which part of his body she should pincushion first with devilishly close shots. Baby Beel cheered from the side, forgetting for a moment that the battle was very real and very dangerous. Well, the master seems fine. Happy to see all going well, she returned her attention to the path the man who kidnapped Alaindelon had taken and went after his tracks
"Stoooooop!" Ruby pleaded as she was dragged through the concrete. "My aura is running low!"
"Hang on a little more!" Tojo asked back. "I'm almost finished!"
As much as Ruby didn't want to upset the man-bear who was clrearly trying to kill her, the huntress couldn't risk taking any longer to get back home, or having her aura depleted so much. She awaited for the perfect chance between two strokes to spin herself out of the one grabbing her leg, reaching for Crescent Rose before he could have a reaction. A quick glance into the wall at her side revealed that the man was in much need for some calligraphy classes.
"Alright, it was great having fun with you." Ruby said. "But now I really have to wrap this up. Are you ready?"
"Huh?"
The huntress used a boost from her weapon to leap forwards, swinging forward with the blunt side of Crescent rose at her foe. He defended with both arms crossed, but another shot from the weapon caused it to spin vertically around her arms, hitting the bear-man from under his cover and on his chin. Ruby then smashed her weapon into the ground and spun around it, hitting her foe with both her feet. Tojo only bounced once on the ground before his opponent catched up to him, slamming him into the ground with a powerful swing followed by several point blank shots. A final swing hurled the man into a building, where he got himself stuck halfway through.
"Wow!" Ruby exclaimed. "Did you see how cool I just was?"
"It was pretty cool, alright." Tojo's muffled voice replied from behind the wall.
"Aaaargh! Stop teasing and to it already!"
The one screaming was Oga, who had just gained a long scratch along his jaw when an arrow purposedly missed for the Nth time. Worse even, the woman in the mask seemed to get off of his suffering, like she was getting revenge for degrading her on the last chapter or something crazy like that. She was ready to fire another arrow when Beelzebub, who had finally caught up to what was happening, jumped on the attacker's leg to try and stop her.
"Daah buh!" He ordered.
"Beel..." Tatsumi was simultaneously proud and worried that his baby was standing up for his foster father, but those feelings were quickly wiped away when Cinder responded with a sharp kick on the baby. Beel cried, but without an ensuing eletric shock. There wasn't a single spec of remorse in her face when she remarked:
"Useless baby. Get out of the way before I kill you too." She was taken by surprise however, when she heard the voice of the man she was beating upon resounding over the whole power plant:
"You..."
"Huh?"
"I thought you were evil, but turns out you're just scum." Oga crumbled the wall stopping him with a sligh shrug of the shoulders. A dark red aura surrounded him, strong enough to make Cinder flinch. "Beel and I have a special tratement for scum."
Trying not to seem scared by the demon in fron of her, the masked woman separated her bow into two blades and prepared to charge forward, but it was futile; Tatsumi was already right in front of her, his hand pressed against her forehead before she could even look up. A massive push smashed her against the floor and, before any answer could be even thought about, a massive stream of flames hit the small crater she formed, rising up a pillar of flames several feet high. To ensure that the scum wouldn't be a problem anymore, he recovered her weapon from the debris and threw it away. Hilda showed not long after, explaining:
"I heard my master screaming. Who did this?"
"Don't worry, it's been taken care of." Beel was back on his father's shoulder, agreeing joyfully:
"Daah."
"Hey guys!" Ruby greeted, showing up shortly after and followed closely by Zwei. "Good to see everyone's safe."
"Enough with the emotional reunion." Hilda ordered. "Let's get Alaindelon back."
"You want him? Here you go!"
The voice was undoubtely the same knife-o-philiac from before. The next thing they noticed was Alaindelon being thrown in front of them, seeming tired but mostly unharmed. Vamp showed up once again in front of them, alone at first glance. It was easy to notice, however, that he had something planned just by the smug look in his face.
"If you were going to give Alaindelon back anyway, why did you take him from us for?" Oga questioned.
"You see, I needed the demon to execute my evil plan." Was Vamp's answer. "Now, let me tell you about ir..." He stopped when he noticed Ruby was terribly distracted by a passing butterfly and Tatsumi and Beel were already sleeping. "Hey! I need your attention!"
"Sorry, sorry! I'll pay attention now." The huntress apologized, giving him her full attention until Zwei notcied a particularly shiny caterpillar. "Ooh, pretty..."
"Zzzzzz..."
"Enough!" Vamp fumed. "If you won't hear about it the nice way, I'll have you hear about it the zombie way!"
The two were broken from their distractions when they noticed the opponents they had just defeated slowly getting back up, as well as all the zombies they had supposedly defeated. Tojo still had a patch of building stuck in his waist and Cinder was still searching for her weapons, but they weren't the largest threat anyore; coming from behind vamp showed up a true army composed of the most vile and deadly foes there could be; it included Geckos, Chipher, the Cobra unit, white fang goons, Grimm, robotic soldiers from Atlas, Yopples and even students from both the Akumano academy and Teimõ Tech.
"Hey, Beel." Oga whispered. "The Akumano demons aren't at least two seasons ahead of the time I got picked off at?"
"Daah?" He asked back.
"Good point." Tatsumi agreed. He then turned his attention towards Vamp and his massive army. "I don't care how big is your little logic-defying army there, we won't back down! I even bet Hilda over here can take them all down by herself." The furious ogre took a quick glance at Hilda and noticed something wrong. "Hilda?"
"What?" Hilda had already opened up Alaindelon and was halfway inside it. Ruby was amazed at the advanced technology her new friends had, trying to touch Alaindelon to see where his skin ended and the interdimensional portal opened up. "Oh, you thought I was actually going to help you out. I was just here to get Alaindelon back. You two have fun in here." The transportation demon closed abruptly and left the scene in a jiffy, yelling:
"Transport!"
"Aw!" Ruby protested at her finger, which received a minor cut in the abrupt movement of Alaindelon and now bled slightly. She put the little wounded finger in her mouth to suck the blood out, but took it out when realization came: "My aura... This is bad."
"Hmpf." Oga complained silently, raising his fists to prepare himself for the war to come.
"Good, it seems like I have your attention now." Vamp noticed with a sick grin. "Like you said, the army behind me is completely lost in time – some come from the past, but most of them come from the future. That's all thanks to your little transportation friend, you see. This place was originally seized by the Skulls to experiment the effects of radiation on nanomachines, a project that worked very well, as you can see." He pointed towards Tojo, Cinder and the zombies, which seemed to be as good as they were before their fights. "But it turns out radiation can do even more than that, when you combine it with that 'power from hell' you brought to us. It was ridiculously easy for our scientists to discover the secret in his transportation system and power it up with Uraniun, creating a true reality displacing machine."
"Hey, um, guy..." Ruby tried to warn.
"Questions after the lecture, please." Vamp replied, oblivious to the threat approaching him. "Now, as I was saying, I programmed this machine to track you down from your origins and bring forth the most vile and deadly scum from your very homes to bring you down, and then conquer the patriots by force!"
"Patriots?" Oga asked.
"It's an information and money thingy." The cheap dracula knockoff explained briefly. "You can trade that with 'take over the world', if you want. It doesn't matter that much for you, because you will all die right now."
"We'll stop you!" The huntress promised.
"Hah! It's too late now, you fools! Your mission has failed." Our heroes prepared themselved for battle, but being exhausted as they were and facing such a formidable army, even the overly optimistic Ruby seemed intimidated by their odds. "Army, a..." He stopped his command when something bumped into his leg. "...A box?"
"It's show time."
Following his catchphrase, Punished Snake jumped our from the box, whipped out a siringe and hit it directly in Vamp's chest, knocking him off guard. He immedeately grabbed from his pockets a trigger and pressed the button, dramatically looking into the distance. Obviously, nothing happened.
"Huh?" Even Vamp was unsure how to react to what happened. He took out the siringe from his chest and simply stared at his mortal enemy. "What was that supposed to do?"
"Hang on a second." Snake pressed the button again, but nothing happened. It was only on the third time that it finally worked.
And oh boy, did it work.
The first result from the trigger was a loud, acute song that oscilated at a rapid pace emanating from every remaining wall of the complex. The sound seemed to pierce through every single one of the modifyed creatures, even Vamp, forcing them to helplessly fall to their knees and cover their ears in desperation. Next, timed explosions destroyed what was left from their research and lab, nullifying any hope to bring further monstrosities to their time. Lastly, a massive firework show followed up, forming colorful shapes of dogs and boxes that stood out even in the sunlight.
"Noooo!" Vamp shouted between long groans of pain. "You idiot! How could you do that!"
"Oh, don't be such a sore loser." Ruby insisted. "He even did the fireworks thing! How can you not like that?"
"That's not the problem..." The villain tried to explain. "The lab... Was the only thing that could take you home."
"Daah buh?"
"Woof?"
"Whaat!?" Ruby and Oga asked in unison. They then turned their attention back to Snake. "How could you do that to us?"
"This is Snake, requesting a fulton extraction." For some reason, Snake was now wearing a set of sunglasses. "Until next time."
Unceremoniously flipping gravity the metaphorical finger, the Boss took a Fulton out of his pocket and slapped it on himself, balooning himself away from Chernobyl once and for all with the certainty of another job well done.
Heroism [+69]
Ruby, Oga and limited company now found themselves in the middle of a suffering army, wasting their precious moments of peace until the disabling equipment Snake made from the nanomachine factory's spare parts ran out trying to get over everything that just had happened to them. Ruby was the first one to snap out of it, saying:
"C'mon, Oga! We can't just stand still like this." She took him by the hand and kept heading forward towards the army.
"Wait, where are we going?"
"I don't know about that science stuff that Vamp dude was talking about, but we need to check if the box guy really did blow up everything right. If there's anything left, maybe we can still go home..."
"That's actually a decent plan." Oga complimented. "C'mon baby Beel, let's head to the lab!"
"Daabuh dah!"
After a short burst of speed, our heroes reached the lab; hidden just behind a pile of sleeping scientists, the explosions did make quite a bit of damage to it, but the systems still somehow remained operational after that, the installations there being so sturdy they might as well have been built to survive a nuclear blast. The core was a blue pillar of light, which was flickering randomly by the damage caused. Ruby immedeately jumped at the screen and started typing furiously.
"Wait, you know how to use this thing?" Tatsumi questioned.
"Hell no! But I need to check my e-mails first." She explained.
"Well then, you better hurry. I'm pretty sure that army coming after us isn't prone for a 5-minute coffee break."
"Get them!" Shouted Vamp from atop a gecko. The army formed a massive wave of dust in their wake, resembling more a Mad Max vehicle gang than a zombie horde at that point. "Get them before they escape!"
"So much spam..." Meanwhile, Ruby calmly deleted some spam. "Hey, look! Another edition of the 'playgun'! They said they would feature Ruyi and Jigu Bag without their casings in this edition! I gotta take a peek..."
"Just go on with it already!"
Desperate to get out of the situation, Oga recurred to his deepest instintcs and looked for the biggest, brightest red button, slamming it as hard as he could. The screen overflowed with 'warning: overload' signs and the core switched from flickering to shining brighter and brighter by the second. When the army finally reached our heroes, the light was already to bright to see anything.
When the flash finally ended, there were no signs of anyone left in Chernobyl.
Location: Mountain Glenn, kingdom of Vale
December 9th, XXXX – 3:10 AM
"Ugh!" When Ruby took a hold of herself she was laying on a hard, cold concrete floor. She got back on her feet to take a look around and found the underground ruins of a city just ahead of her, just after a large cliff several feet deep. Am I back at Mountain Glenn? Before she could do anything about it, however, a bright light hit her and two white fang soldiers showed from from a door, yelling:
"Freeze!"
"Where did she come from?" The huntress took a step back, trying to get herself some space, but she was already dangling at the ledge of the cliff. "You're a long way from home, little girl."
Quickly being surrounded and without any chance of escaping from the ledge, Ruby had no choice but to reach out for Crescent Rose; sadly, neither zwei nor her weapon were there to be seen. Oh darn. One of the white fang thugs reached out for her arm and grabbed it to prevent her escape.
"Hey!"She shouted, getting rid of his hands. "Hands off!" Enfuriated by the whole situation, the huntress could only ask herself: Alright, Ruby. What would Oga do in this situation? Gathering all her inner strenght, Ruby readied her figthing stance and, whilist letting out a fierce war cry, hit the man with the most powerful Oga punch she could muster. Like a magickarp using splash, it had no effect. As she was being knocked out cold, she could only think to herself:
Welp, at least I'm back home... Right?
Location: Diamond Dogs off-shore base, Seychelles
December 10th, 1986 – 8:34 P.M.
After pulling off one the greatest escapes in his life, Punished Snake finally arrived at the Diamond Dogs base. After such a sucessful mission, he expected a warm welcome from his thrustworthy soldiers lined up in front of him to salute him. When the helicopter that picked him up began its descent, however, he noticed something was very wrong: fire was wreacking havoc on several points of the mother base, explosions had turned the medical bay to shreds and the research and developtment base had tilted so harshly the better part of it was underwater. Most of the soldiers were busy trying to fix all the damage caused, but Ocelot was still there to receive him.
"What happened?" Snake asked while getting out of Pequod, the helicopter.
"You left the online mode on, Boss." Shalashaska mentioned. "Why would you even do such a thing?"
"Oh, yeah... I forgot."
"But you shouldn't worry, Boss. With all the GMP we got from your last mission we should be able build it all back and then some."
"Who was it?" The Boss questioned. "The contractor."
"Well..." Ocelot took a look down at the clipboard in his hands. "Apparently, it's some kind of organization related to the british Royal Air Force... I wonder what they wanted with all that. But who cares? It's easy money. But you should get some rest now, Boss. Your next mission is probably going to be even tougher than this one." Snake took a quick turn into the fridge-shaped bathroom just beside him and took a 4-second-bath. "Good to see you're rested, Boss. Hop on the Pequod and let's go..." On Ocelot's mission list, he noticed another mission from the same client, this one offering even more GMP than the last one. Hm... Maybe a little later.
Location: Oga's bedroom, Japan
July 10th, 2011 – 11:00 AM
When Oga finally took control over his sight again he was back at his bedroom, Beel at his shoulder and Hilda casually sitting at his bed as if she was already expecting their arrival. 2 Days had passed since his disappearance, but no one seemed to have missed the furious ogre at all. Or at least that's what seemed to be the case, until Alaindelon showed up from his door, tears in his eyes:
"Oh, Oga-san! It's so nice to see you again!" The transportation demon opened himself up in half, dropping a semi-confused Furuichi on the floor. "Thank you so much for trying to save me!"
"Ugh..." Furuichi grunted, then looked up to Oga "I just commented with Alaindelon I should check up if you weren't doing anything behind my back, and the guy over here immedeately sucked me in." He took a good look at his friend, suspiscious, then asked: "You didn't do anything while I wasn't here, right? No shenanigans or weird adventures?" Tatsumi and Hilda exchanged a quick glance at each other before replying in unison:
"Nothing at all."
"Daah buh dah." Beel agreed.
"But if nothing happened..." Furuichi commented. "Then why is Tojo Hidetora from the TKKH stuck at the wall?" Indeed, he was. Thankfully, it was his upper end that showed up to them. Tojo tried to explain:
"Uh, I... I'm getting paid for it."
"Oh." Furuichi noticed. After his mission of checking up on his friends was done, he headed for the door. "Well then, I'll see you later."
"I guess our mission to find someone strong failed..." Oga noticed. "But at least we did what Beel's father asked for, right?"
"You did a good job, I'll give you that." Hilda had turned on her 'sweet' switch, and had her attention on her master. "Just look at the master. He is so happy!"
"Daaaah... Buh!"
Location: Serak power plant, Afghanistan.
Decembeth 10th, 1986 – 9:02 P.M.
"I'm sorry, my master... I did the best I could, but they were too crafty!"
The one pleading was Vamp, who was on his knees and facing the back of a sinister figure in an overcoat and a stylish hat. They were at a secret millitary base inside the Serak power plant, which used to house the Sahelanthropus before they lost it at the base. Now, they were trying their best to build another one before Snake found out about the base. The figure turned around, revealing its Skullface under a small bandit's mask. He said:
"I don't care for excuses. I gave you one chance, and you failed me. You know the punishment for that." Vamp's pace went pale from the threat.
"No, please, don't... Give me one more chance!"
"Men, take him back to where he belongs."
"No! I beg you!" Vamp shouted as he was dragged out of the scene by soviet soldiers. "I can't go back to PS2 graphics! My glorious hair..." As his whines slowly faded out in the distance, Skullface searched for something in the pockets of his overcoat. It was a picture of his father, the legendary threat of the Cold war, known only as 'The Bonus'. His face was somehow even more daunting than that of his son, being composed exlusively by an oversized nose.
"I'm sorry, father." The Bonus' son mumbled to himself. "I failed in solving the situation in your way. I have no option now but to solve the D-Dogs issue my way... Overcomplicated Bond villain plots." Skullface let the Bonus' picture fall as he laughed maniacally for no reason at all. "Muahahahahaha...!"
- Chapter end -
Author's note:
It's finally complete! I might not have been exactly perfect on my chatper-a-week policy, but at least I managed to finish this in a reasonable time span. For that, I'd like to thank anyone who took the time to follow, favorite or review my work; you're the ones that kept me going with this trainwreck of a story. To express my gratitude on that, I plan on posting a bonus chapter sometime in the future, explaining how Cinder and Tojo ended up as Vamp's thugs.
Additionally, if you want more of me, you can check out my ongoing story Black Veil Chronicles, a slightly more serious EU take on some of Katekyo Hitman Reborn's most forgotten characters, and the 'prequel' of sorts for this story from which the Bonus comes from, Operation Leaf Eater. Thanks for reading and until next time!
