Small edit: The last chapter has been renamed The Fear of Chainsaws 6, and this one will become the new Turning Point. Sorry for the trouble.
Turning Point 1
It was a small thing at first. Merely a droplet in a sink that was just slightly ajar, wobbling under its own weight, yet not heavy enough for even gravity to take it down. It swayed and trembled, until the inevitable collection of itself made a single drop of itself. It stretched and swayed once more, but this time it was big enough.
It fell down and stopped as suddenly as it started moving. It was still the same tiny drop of water. But it was no longer in the sink, but in foreign land. And that meant that that single drop of water could start pretty interesting things up. Not immediately, mind you. But the snowball effect always talked about all hope being lost for want of a nail.
The outsider conveyed the information, the information would become a hypothesis, and the hypothesis would kickstart a series of experiments to be validated or discarded. Such was human nature, such was the reach of an organization that spanned several alternate worlds yet didn't know how to colonize the moon yet.
Another droplet began to form. Following the path of the first. Slowly, not even knowing what hurry was. In this world there was no need to hurry, after all. Fear was widespread and humanity had accepted this as their reality. It was unlike beyond the door, where they had changed and adjusted in response to the imminent threat hanging over this one like a knife. There was a distinct lack of something, but no matter how much the being analyzed the information available, it just couldn't find the solution needed.
Feathers descended to the world below. Like comets they crashed surrounded by flame on the people minding their own business. They came in truly random patterns. No telekinetic pull to let them kill major targets, no further plan but the ever-vigilant eye in the future that nonetheless had little to do with the way they fell.
The humans would panic. They would become engulfed in fear and make the sink drop droplets even faster. But that was fine. If it was that much, the being could see things working out nonetheless. Its alien mind, if you could call it that, didn't comprehend how or why things led to one another. It merely perceived the past and the future, and took decisions based on how positive the results were to the task given to it.
No mind to think.
No will to break.
No voice to cry out suffering.
So it performed its task. It did not falter when its work turned counterproductive, it did not hesitate when the path laid ahead chanced its own destruction. It would not hesitate to do it itself if it meant its mission was fulfilled. It did not have that sort of sophisticated computational abilities. Not to weigh the morality of its actions, not to fret nor resent its creators for what they made it to be. It merely worked as intended.
The Simurgh descended over the african planes. Massive wings stretching all around its main body, like an angelic host coming to meet humanity to heed its message. However, humanity already had the fear of the Simurgh deeply ingrained in their veins. They regarded the Endbringer like they would their representation of the Devil itself wherever they saw it approach. Their fear was so great, the world of Earth Bet had been shaped by its existence alone, and no corners of the world did not utter its name in hurried whispers, unable to think straight when it came into the conversation.
Religious idols were destroyed or ever so slightly modified. Belief shifted and the political reach of all beliefs changed, too big a change for it to be noticed. Too small for people that cared to not notice. This too, was planned. A part of its design, as not even its form, was spared to become optimal to fulfill its mission.
But now, the Simurgh regarded humans the same way a true angel would. The irony was lost to it, since it lacked sentience in the truest sense of the world. The forbidden life, whose creator Leviathan unwittingly ended, was more alive than the Simurgh ever would.
It landed amidst the chunks and pieces it discarded using its own telekinetic pull. The humans ran away as far as they could, cried as loudly as they could in hopes of warning others about the inevitable. It didn't matter, not really. Upon landing, its mission had been fulfilled. It was just a matter of seeing it through to make it more optimal.
It kept on tearing itself apart. Feathers and human-like pieces were discarded to the wild. Like an iceberg too hot to support its form, so too the Simurgh kept falling apart. Slowly enough for the humans to realize its appearance was different from every other time, but fast enough so the parahumans around the world would have little time to witness it by themselves.
Fear not.
The message was so much like the angelic forms described in myth and legend, yet the being had no way of understanding the significance. The irony of it all. It merely saw the future, regarded the past, and adopted new methods. It saw in the realm of possibilities, and saw the Cycle coming to an abrupt end. Sometimes the Creators would be responsible, sometimes it would be an entity from the bowels of hell.
Sometimes it would be the Chainsaw Man. And yet sometimes it would be something like, but not quite, the Simurgh itself.
It wasn't as if the Simurgh couldn't find ways of terminating the problems. Well, maybe the Endbringer devils would be more difficult, but the Simurgh had the past and future in its grasp. It shouldn't be an impossible goal, and without willpower to exhaust, it normally would do just that. For the sake of the Cycle.
And yet its sight did not see the end.
As long as humanity lived, it saw itself fighting Chainsaw Man over and over again. Killing it each time, vaporizing it to its core components until nothing but dust remained. And yet every time, every single time it would come back. Just as powerful, just as vicious. And the same came for those of its kind.
Even with all the power in its grasp, even with the Creator so far above and beyond the limit of what reality should be… In the end, all aspects of their so-called magic was merely the application of fundamental laws of the multiverse twisted on top of one another.
And yet, there were beings that regarded those fundamental laws and optional at best, downright ridiculous at worst.
Matter was created from drops of blood. Energy that came from absolutely nowhere was discharged like a free-for-all fest to annihilate those that gave them power.
The Gun Devil alone would devastate the world faster than Leviathan and Behemoth combined. Not because it was stronger per se, but because it was indeed what humanity believed the Endbringers to be: A ravenous monster that wished for nothing but to kill mankind.
It was ridiculous. It was impossible. These being attained the unattainable, violated the inviolable. They existed like the end-point of the Cycle tried to attain, and yet they threatened to extinguish it in one fell swoop.
The fear of the Endbringers was too strong. The image mankind had of them too cemented in their consciousness. The Simurgh ignored the parahumans that came to fell it once more, and kept on tearing itself apart. This was not to be a battle like the others, this would give the world more time to get their bearings and find a solution to its siblings.
That was fine. It was how it was supposed to be.
The Simurgh neither felt down nor did it regret anything. It had no capacity to do so. It merely corrected the course so the end goal would still be within reach. It kept on fulfilling its duty to its absolute capabilities within the programming it had been created with.
No cost too great.
The parahumans stopped attacking it. They waited with bated eyes when they realized what was happening, what the Endbringer wanted them to believe was happening. It would deter mankind in some ways, but encourage them in another. It would rob their attention from the droplets that had no way of stopping, as the first of the Chainsaw's kind dropped on the world somewhere around this time.
With one final push, programmed teatrics and symbology in motion, the Simurgh ripped its human head and let it roll to the ground with one final crash. It would roll seven times until a mere sapling of a baobab would seemingly make it stop. Seven times like the most hideous of sins, like the holiest of virtues. It would rest besides a sapling, like life renewing, like the new replacing the old, like the seed of the world tree in myth and legend. Then, the Endbringer's body would fall apart. Not dead, neither in the true sense nor in the one that mattered, but merely dormant. Waiting in hibernation as it lowered its functions to the bare minimum, one final signal sent to its siblings before it ceased to be until the time was nigh.
It began like a droplet of rain, heralding a greater flood but completely unimportant on its own.
The parahumans of Gesellschaft walked on streets clear of the public's eye. They were safe in their territory. Police officers bribed, the local counterpart to the U.S.A.'s Protectorate firmly blackmailed or otherwise preoccupied with other matters. They needed not to hide their hatred and resentment, nor their pent up energy since they were on a mission.
"Disgusting." A woman would comment as she looked at the picture in hand "Looks like a fucking hairless monkey."
A man chuckled.
"We're animal control, we deal with these things."
Of course, their words were not exactly that. But the sentiment remained the same. They were called because they were best to deal with a certain problematic individual that appeared out of nowhere and caused problems.
They had to admit, it took guts to get so close to their domain and disappear arian people under their nose. It was exactly the sort of thing that would make for a great boost in PR, and if it weren't because Kaiser lost someone back in the U.S., they would perhaps have broadcasted the whole thing before even starting to hunt it down.
They arrived at the garbage dump they were pointed to. Fitting, but no less annoying. The normals under their ranks had failed to catch the thing, and so this group of parahumans was sent to dispatch it quickly and efficiently.
The woman could sling bolts of dark oozing substance with properties of both oil and glue. The man could turn muscles into all sorts of highly durable silicones, and the third member and fourth member had strength and speed boosting powers both.
The started moaning about the place they were sent to, but at the slightest movement their senses sharpened and their faces contorted into images of concentration. They were trained, went through rigorous physical and mental trials to become the perfect soldiers to spread and protect the truth Gesellschaft proclaimed. They might not be the highest in the parahuman ranks, but they were good at what they did. And so they advanced. Unbothered, laser-focused, unafraid.
"Hungry… So hungry…" The moans came from somewhere around them. They were quick to spot the direction of the voice, and to spread around them to quickly and efficiently sweep through the lesser being in one go.
For context, there were parahumans that looked positively monstrous. This was widely known in the parahuman community, but this one looked exactly like Gesellschaft wanted to depict monsters and minorities as.
It was a slender, deathly so, heavily tanned person. With white strips running through its body like some sort of tribal painting of sorts. Its limbs were mismatched, and too long for its torso and head. The latter was covered in a mixture of feathers, cloth and something else, obscuring its face but letting a toothy grin peek out of it.
It was also munching on a Gesellschaft goon, which did not sit well with the parahumans. But their conditioning prevented them from acting out on their repulsion.
The man with the changing silicone body charged first. No words were spoken, no signal was given. It was just how it had always been. He created hammers out of his fist, and jumped from garbage pile to the next until he was in course to crash on top of their acceptable target.
The woman had a drone somewhere nearby, and started recording. The Simurgh's appearance would cut the feed for long enough so the creature would not be seen by the public, but the racist woman had no way of knowing that.
Why would the Endbringer do that? Simple. Because that thing wasn't just an acceptable target. It was the acceptable target. Its skin color did not matter, not even its unfortunate constitution. Not even the most charitable of social justice activists would even suggest protecting it.
Because it was no parahuman. It was the Cannibalism Devil. And as such, it would grow in power if the public knew and began fearing its existence.
The lunging man had no way of knowing this, though. He simply thought him a malformed man, and died thinking as such.
The monster's feathery hide opened up like a flower. Like a sunflower greeting the sun with gusto, and no small amount of malice.
The racist man's vision was filled with a completely inhuman head. Round beyond what life would produce, and filled with nothing but blood and a tongue.
The devil opened its toothy maw, and the parahuman was stripped of his skin and flesh in an instant. Only for it to dissolve like a soup and rush into the devil's mouth like a tornado of disgusting biomass.
"Ah… Hungry, so hungry…"
The rest of the Gesellschaft parahumans charged in. Again, their conditioning prevented them from panicking. Again, their inhuman treatment prevented them from saving their lives.
The devil closed its hood like a bud, disgusting munching echoing from beyond its flesh cover. It gave the parahumans a bit of time to get near, but lashed out with an emaciated arm when they were in range.
Two of them had super toughness that was nothing to scoff at. Their passagers boosting their physical attributes through interesting applications of the laws of reality gained through eons of evolution.
The devil cut through both with its nails. Fear was irrational, untamable for creatures that knew nothing of it. It opened its hood again and munched on the two parahumans with the same ease as it did the last.
The woman would have tried to send a signal, as per her training, but she too lacked the skin to do so now.
"Hungry… So hungry…" The devil moaned again. It cared not about the intentions of the people that came to meet it. It only cared about making humans suffer and satiate its thirsty for fresh blood.
And of course, to get as far away from the roar of the chainsaw as it could. It didn't know why, but it would still run away as if its life depended on it.