Chapter 11: Fear the Stinger
Brandon twirled his Cerberus handguns triumphantly as the last few orgmen disintegrated. After storing his weapons in his coffin, he retraced his steps to where he had left Mika.
"Orgmen are no big deal for her and Orion," Scutum spoke in his head. "In fact, you'll regret not watching your child kick their ass."
Brandon sighed. Mika would have to fight by herself to be a competent fighter, but there was always some kind of nagging feeling whenever he left her alone. Could her body handle an orgman's punch?
"Don't worry. Orion has dulled her pain perception and granted her some regenerative powers."
Damned thing had never seen a snapped bone popping out of one's flesh, eh? No girl could stand such a bloody sight.
"I see what you see, Brandon. This includes the various injuries you've suffered throughout your undead life."
With a frown, Brandon focused on the environment. Fuzzy wisps of white roamed the empty neighborhood and crept around the surrounding apartment complexes and street signs. Whatever lay in the distance looked more like something out of a black and white TV: silhouettes of various sizes amid the hazy whiteness.
Brandon spotted two humanoid silhouettes. The rather short one was Mika's; Brandon recognized it from the short hair and the broad shoulders. He wasn't quite sure about the tall and lanky one beside Mika, but the guitar-like figure in its hands and the huge tusk-like extension on its head reminded him of someone familiar.
Brandon closed in and saw Billy, his old friend, a ghost whose teal electric guitar could shoot thunder bolts and lasers. Just like last year, he still had that blonde lightning-shaped pompadour. His matching set of red cardigan and pants, combined with a white t-shirt and a thunder-like "B" on the back of the cardigan, always tempted Brandon to call him Mr. Gaudy Guitarist.
"It's Grave!" He smiled; Brandon noticed the unnatural contraction of his facial muscles. "How have you been?" A scowling Mika stood beside the ghost, looking down at the cracked asphalt road.
"Brandon," Orion's robotic voice came from Mika's left hand, "please talk some sense into these two. They wish to spare the dragon."
Brandon's eye widened. Seriously, why? The beast had attacked him earlier!
Tightening his grip on the fingerboard of his guitar, Billy glowered at Mika's hand. "The dragon is actually Jyuji, you know? He's our friend!"
"He was," Orion corrected.
Mika looked up at Brandon, her eyes glistening with tears. "Can we...just avoid the dragon and go straight to Central Billion instead? Uncovering the mystery of the mist should be enough to impress the Metaslica people."
Brandon shook his head.
"The hell?" Billy stormed towards Brandon. "Jyuji and you worked together to stop the Methuselah's invasion last year! You two are like brothers, you know?"
Brandon crossed his arms over his chest. "I once met a boy in the orphanage and grew up with him. Then we joined the state's biggest mafia organization. We helped each other to reach the top, but then..." He pointed at the patch of pale skin on where his left eye used to be. "This."
"Jyuji-"
"Will attack us when he sees it fit," Brandon continued. "Even someone you've known for decades can kill you."
"You jerk!"
"Am not." Brandon walked past Billy and towards the tearful Mika. Wrapping his arms around her body and pulling her close, he asked, "How important is your dream to you?"
Tugging at Brandon's unbuttoned jacket and dress shirt, Mika looked up. "But the dragon is Mr. Jyuji."
"Is Jyuji more important than your dream?"
"He was our friend!" Mika scrunched the fabric in her hands. "We should talk to him!"
"Mika," Orion spoke from her hand, "the dragon is no longer Jyuji. The Methuselah folk in him has taken over his body, and unfortunately for him, it worships the mist."
"But-"
A bestial roar resounded above them. Looking up, Brandon saw a winged figure streaking across the gray sky. Horns and tusks of various sizes and shapes jutted out of its ridged head.
"Jyuji!" Billy rocketed into the sky, only to stop in his tracks and strum his guitar. A large swarm of gargoyles came down upon him.
Brandon released Mika, mentioning Fatality Bringer as he brandished his coffin. Nope, he would kill the gargoyles for Mika, not for the selfish ghost who had been a bad influence on her. The barrel of an assault rifle emerged at the tip of the coffin.
A gargoyle stopped Billy's play with an elbow to the guitar. The instrument slipped out of Billy's hand and crashed into the road, cracks forking across its body on impact. Billy - now a semi-transparent figure - let out a long, loud, "No!" as he dived in to retrieve his instrument.
Serves you right, Billy! Brandon sprayed the swooping gargoyles with bullets and caused a downpour of silver dust.
Brandon's ears registered a set of steady booms from behind. Just as he turned to see an incoming horde of orgmen, a series of rapid clacks and crashes resounded behind him.
"Beyond the Grave!" a man's voice echoed across the street. "The boss has decided that you deserve something worse than death!"
"Yikes, it's that scorpion bastard!" Billy shouted. "Dang, my guitar can't shoot bigger lightning bolts until it regenerates some more."
Brandon whirled to find Billy gliding over him. A scorpion with the upper body of a bare-chested man came at them, the two giant pincers from his waist knocking street lamps and signs into the shoddy apartment complexes. The creature stood about four-story tall; the stinger tail hanging above his bald head added a little more than one story to his height. Crystalline plates covered the scorpion-half of the monstrosity.
Hmm, how about a few rockets to that fleshy human-half of his?
"Brandon," Orion's robotic voice came from behind him.
Brandon turned to see Mika facing the orgmen with her pistol ready. His eyebrow quirked, but the confusion subsided when Orion told him, "Let Mika use this horde to practice that poison infusion technique. The better she is at channeling my power into the gun, the stronger the poison will be."
Billy moved towards Mika's left side. "I'll help her."
And use the opportunity to convince her not to kill the dragon. Brandon scowled. He'd deal with that later, though.
"Let's go, Brandon," Scutum told him. "My barrier is ready."
Returning his focus to the approaching scorpion man, Brandon mentioned Doom's Rain in his heart. The coffin split open in the middle and revealed the six-tubed rocket launcher within. Ten-inch missiles whooshed out of the pods, most of which dodged the thrashing pincers and struck the creature's humanoid torso. The small explosions left only rashes and blisters, so Brandon fired some more until the coffin smoldered and had to revert.
When the blasts settled, Brandon's eye widened. The scorpion man pressed on, the burns on his torso shrinking quickly.
All right, time to summon his dual railguns and charge up! Brandon hopped onto a swiping pincer, drawing his Cerberus handguns as he ran up the armored arm. The scorpion man swung a pincer from his human-half, only to hit a wall of glass that vanished once the claw darted off.
Brandon jumped onto the creature's head and over his incoming tail. Cerberus Overdose! A massive rectangular barrel shot out of the coffin's left and right side; each of them had a slot for a Cerberus handgun near the base.
Landing several feet away from the scorpion man, Brandon whirled and inserted his guns into the slots. The coffin whirred like a jet engine, and the conductive rails sizzled with yellow energy. Each muzzles emitted a spherical glow that grew bigger with each passing second.
The approaching scorpion man sported a wicked grin that somehow roused the hair on the back of Brandon's neck. Brandon held his ground, teeth gritted in determination.
The stinger tail came down, punching through Scutum's wall of glass and digging deep into Brandon's chest. As the tail lifted his skewered body into the air, two humongous energy spheres shot out of the railguns. The explosion blew Brandon and his weapons away.
Brandon crashed into the ground, the right side of his jacket and shirt gone, his pants a tattered pair of shorts. Nothing hurt, but he could barely move his legs - a mess of scorched flesh - now. Blisters littered his torso and right arm, most of which were ruptured and oozing with blood.
Huh? Where was the glossy blue line on his body? Why couldn't he regenerate? Scutum, he called in his mind, answer me!
Instead of Scutum's robotic voice, Brandon heard loud scraping noises. The overturned body of the scorpion man rested in the distance; despite missing its humanoid torso and all of its legs and pincers, it rocked left and right like a rocking bed. The cracks on its crystalline plates slowly disappeared.
Heart pounding, Brandon rolled to his stomach and inched towards his smoldering weapons. They lay a few feet away from him.
The rapid clacks from behind pushed him faster; soon, he noticed the colossal shadow of the scorpion man on the ground. As Brandon reached out his good hand to grab the coffin's chains, a gigantic pincer seized him.
The grip tightened, and Brandon screamed at the rattling of his bones. Blood poured out of his mouth.
"Ah, I can hear it." Grinning, the scorpion man brought Brandon closer to his face. "More of your bones are breaking. Isn't that lovely?"
Brandon struggled against the tightening clutch, but only briefly; breathing lightly and rapidly through his blood-filled mouth did nothing good to his blurring vision and weakening muscles. His broken ribs sliced and stabbed his lungs whenever he tried to breathe.
Tears trickled down his eye. Mika... His poor little child would soon lose her most reliable fighter, her father...
Bang!
The grip loosened, and Brandon's limp body hit the asphalt road with a thud. The scorpion man glanced over his shoulder; further behind him, Mika stood with her pistol glowing intensely.
"You sneaky brat!" The monstrosity whirled and scuttled towards Mika, who retreated while firing incandescent needles at him. The projectiles ricocheted off his thrashing pincers.
The sight gave Brandon just enough strength to touch his coffin's chains. Doom's Rain, he called, and the weapon container split open to reveal a six-tubed missile launcher. Rockets flew out of the pods and towards the scorpion man.
Much to Brandon's delight, the burns left by the blasts wouldn't heal this time. Shocked, the scorpion man stopped in his tracks and took a flurry of needles to his torso.
A melancholy tune echoed from above, and Billy shouted, "This is for Glenn!" Spectral roses rained down upon the scorpion man and exploded, sending shock waves and bolts of lightning rippling in all directions. The creature let out an agonized scream.
When the blast settled and the shriek died out, the monstrosity stood still like a statue. The crystalline plates on the scorpion-half were all gone, exposing the fissures that spread across his charred skin. The creature soon crumbled to dust, and Brandon could feel the tension leaving his muscles.
"Orion's poison worked!" Billy exclaimed. When he dived towards Brandon, his eyes widened. "Grave, y-your wounds... What's wrong with your regeneration?"
"Must have...something to do with..." Brandon coughed up blood. "Scutum's disappearance."
"Brandon!" Mika ran towards him and knelt down. Tears welling in her eyes, she held his broken hand. "Hang in there. I'll find a transport so that we can leave this place and find help." The warmth from Mika's little hands permeated through his skin and soothed him.
He gave her the broadest smile he could muster.
"I could not contact Scutum, Mika," Orion spoke through her left hand. "We should visit Metaslica Faculty of Science. Right now, they are the most knowledgeable about Methuselah folks."
"Metaslica? But I'm just a slum dweller. Everybody there looks down on me."
"Give it a try. I am sure that they will change their mind when they learned that you had just explored the misty region."
"Kill Jyuji." Brandon panted. "His head...will make them bow before you."