Before we begin, as always, there's a quick disclaimer I'd like to put in place. I do not, in any way, shape or form own, or claim ownership of anything within the franchise(s) written and owned by Kamachi Kazuma, or any of those owned formerly by Paramount Pictures, or owned presently by Warner Bros. Pictures (under New Line Cinema). This piece is a NON-PROFIT, FAN-MADE narrative piece set in the Toaru Majutsu no Index universe; though it brings joy to myself, and hopefully to those who read it, this piece will generate NO gain, monetary or otherwise, for me in any way, shape, or form. ToAru Majutsu no Index, as well as all characters, settings, situations, and terminology (save for original creations of my own) are © Kamachi Kazuma and ASCII Media Works. Friday the 13th was created by Victor Miller and Sean S. Cunningham and is owned by Warner Bros. Pictures (under New Line Cinema). The character of Jason Voorhees was created by Victor Miller, Sean S. Cunningham, Ron Kurz, and Tom Savini, and is owned by Warner Bros. Pictures (under New Line Cinema).
Author's Note: I've been gone for a while. Sorry about that. As I have remarked in past preambles, times do change, and so have I, I suppose. As you can tell if you're reading this (are you?) I'm still alive and kicking. Funny thing about creativity; oftentimes it comes about in the strangest of ways! A close friend and I were brainstorming, tossing ideas at the wall, and observing the results, in order to gauge what might stick. As fate would have it, everyone's favourite spiky-haired hero and his incredible right hand came up in conversation. Having recently binged the Friday the 13th series of films, starting with the 1980 original and concluding with Jason X, I remarked what I still consider the strangest thing: "what if Kamijou fought Jason?" We had a laugh about it, and, here I am, writing about it now.
I should warn you, friend reader. Things are going to be especially grim here. You will very likely witness your favourite ToAru Majutsu no Index characters meeting particularly grizzly ends. If this doesn't sound like something you'd like to experience, I suggest reading another piece. You've been warned. Should you choose to continue, I'd prefer not to hear complaints about the matter going forward!
Without further ado, I present to you…
A Certain Final Testament.
Forest Green, New Jersey, USA.
August 11th, 2:38 AM.
Tranquil night, disturbed. Unnaturally, the wind's gusts accelerated, as great, elder pine trees swayed, buffeted. Unable to resist, they shook small, scuttling life forms from their branches. Squirrels darted about, leaping every which way as if panicked. Small, diurnal birds jolted into consciousness and fluttered away, entire families departing from their abodes.
The gusts were not of man nor beast, but of machine. A helicopter, white as a fresh winter morning's snowfall, descended like some primordial sky-deity seeking worship from unseen savages below. The whirling propeller produced no audible stimulation of its own. With a gentle thud it marked out its spot of descent and jerked to a halt. The vehicle's windshield was pitch-dark, like a cloudless night's sky devoid of stars. Entrance hatches were without windows altogether. They slid outward, splitting from the main mass suddenly.
The woods were dead quiet, now. No life stirred as the machine fell silent. Beneath its weight, the rain-soaked, grass-pocked earth seemed to sink, as if ready to give way to some deep, subterranean cavern system.
Those who emerged were no less daunting. Men on some mission or another, clad from head to toe in heavy, plated body armour. Their boots sank into the mud, as the grounds themselves seemed to make effort to suck them in, and devour them, whole. Gesturing wordlessly, communicating to one another through a series of arcane hand gestures, they convened as one, swiftly covering ground. Firearms, strapped to their backs, were unfurled, cocked, and loaded. Laser sights, piercing red, illuminated the night's oppressive darkness.
Some unidentified beast croaked aloud. The woods came to life with unexpected activity.
The group of six, barely human in outward appearance for even their faces were entirely masked by tight-fitting, armour-plated helmets, with fitted visors and pod-like apparatuses to assist with breathing, fell upon a singular location, surrounding it, following whatever strategy they had plotted with their mysterious, wild gesturing.
Low, cobblestone walls surrounded it. Overgrown with moss, offering habitat to all manner of squirming insects and scuttling arthropods, those walls had surely seen better days. They offered no glory nor affection to the dead buried here, beneath their cracked, faded markers.
A standing sign, carved from what might have once been ornate woodwork, filth-encrusted, weather-worn and forgotten by time spelled out the name of this time-lost place.
"TRANQUIL GARDENS CEMETARY"
The apparent, if de-facto leader of the unfolding operation stepped forward, pushing a rust-laden gate aside, passing through the 'portal', as it might have been. The thing creaked and groaned in protest, complaining loudly; or perhaps urging he who crossed the threshold it provided to turn back.
His helmet collapsed in on itself, folding backwards rapidly. Like tiny, mechanical parts moving just beneath the surface, the plated surfaces shrunk, twisted, and wound themselves many times over, retreating, back into some central container. Revealed was a gruff, crease-marked face, partially obscured by the presence of thick, scruffy facial hair. An unkempt head of the brown-black stuff, caked in sweat, trickled from his scalp.
"Sir," another spoke aloud, firearm held aloft. He was on the defensive, unlike his superior. "Captain Ishihara, sir, I don't understand…"
"Your job isn't to understand," the shot-caller snapped, patience very evidently running thin. "Your job is to stand back, look pretty, and watch as I bag this stiff. Just like my job isn't to ask what in the world the General Superintendent wants with a mass murderer's rotting carcass."
That was strange, wasn't it? Was he, the lone follower who had thus far spoken at all throughout this entire mission, the only one to consider how very, very odd this whole situation was? Surely others were considering the same, and simply preferred contemplative silence over voicing their concerns and thusly being chewed out.
Ishihara looked about, casting his eyes' gaze here, there, and back again. The night's darkness created shapes, played tricks on his mind. Deep within the cover of the woodlands, deeper, where the great, elder pines became dense, where the grass-pocked, dirt trails dissipated and led to likely uncharted wild lands, he could have sworn he'd seen something moving about. Lithe, slender, like a great, malnourished titan of some description.
Shaking his head – foolish, as if he needed to physically move his skull about to catalogue his scattered thoughts – Ishihara turned back to his squad.
"Does anyone have a…"
Silently, a subordinate gestured to the nearest section of collapsing, cobblestone walling. There, the device Ishihara sought sat, abandoned. A shovel. Mud had collected, and hardened, upon the dim, faded, metallic head and bright, emerald, green-hued moss grew there. In no mood to concern himself with the needs of the local flora, Ishihara approached, took the rickety tool into his hands, and looked about the graveyard.
"Keep your eyes open, you lot," Ishihara commanded, waving his hand about in the air. "We're looking for a specific grave, yeah? Voorhees. Jason." Grunting, he repeated, "Jason Voorhees", in perfectly enunciated English. "Don't go digging up someone's grandmother."
The group searched the moldering graveyard, for a while. Many of the markers and larger, greater tombstones were far too faded to be properly identified; there were even some graves that barely had any form of identification at all, save for the shattered, stone remnants of what might have once been markers.
Heavily vandalized and slowly being reclaimed by Mother Nature's more opportunistic floral elements, Tranquil Gardens Cemetery, Ishihara admitted, silently in his own mind was no resting place. It was a dump.
"Sir!"
A subordinate's exasperated exclamation caught Ishihara's attention. He turned on his heel, nearly losing his footing as the cemetery's muddy ground sucked at his plated boot, and approached, following another proclamation of, "Captain Ishihara, sir! I found it!"
"Keep your voice down, you bastard," Ishihara hissed. "Good. Good…"
Brandishing his shovel, Ishihara peered down at the cracked, defaced marker. Plastered with offensive English slurs, gang tags, battered, broken, nearly every surface cracked to some extent, he could barely make out the identifying letters that spelled the end of his unlawful entry into American airspace.
"JASON VOORHEES"
"Not even a "Rest in Peace," Ishihara muttered, his words intended exclusively for his own concerns, though he permitted his subordinates to hear and know of them, regardless. "The Americans aren't ones for ceremony, I take it."
The shovel came down, hard, and struck the earth with a thud that satisfied the acting captain. Easily piercing layers of thick, sticky mud, it bit deep. Ishihara brought the tool up and tossed a clump of dislodged earth over his broad shoulder. Firearms raised, muzzled pointed directly at the disturbed, rotting ground where their 'quarry' was buried, his subordinates, like statues, stood perfectly at the ready, legs apart, plated boots planted against the moist, slippery ground.
"And so, we meet for the first time, Jason…"
Deeper and deeper into the earth, the shovel bit, pulling large hunks away. Worms wriggled within, some falling away as each clump was tossed. Occasionally, other creatures would find themselves ripped from their habitats. Earwigs, small, unidentifiable beetles and even a collection of squirming, yellowish-white maggots.
From nowhere, like some crouching assailant leaping out from the darkness to strike their victim unaware, rain came. Lightly, at first, mere mist pelting those who observed the goings-on in Tranquil Gardens Cemetery; but before long Mother Nature, as if voicing her displeasure, brought her rains down with increased intensity.
What had started as droplets, smaller than a pen's tip, had become a torrential downpour.
"Hell!" Ishihara exclaimed, wiping his brow. "Where'd all this rain come from?!"
The shovel, then, struck rotting wood, and went directly through it. Though the shovel's head was dull and covered in thick layers of rust, the force behind each thrust proved great enough to completely break through what was very obviously a coffin.
The digging proceeded at a heightened, almost frenzied pace. Urged on by the rain, or by the chill that crept swiftly into his bones, perhaps, Ishihara feverishly excavated that which brought him across continents.
Each strike, deeper into the earth, subsequently bit even deeper into the rotting, wooden coffin. The thing was waterlogged and stunk to the High Heavens of wretched, moldering death. Creeping, black mold colonies covered the desecrated, ruined coffin's outer surfaces.
The corpse held within was in no better condition. Ishihara got a closer look at it, as he fell to one knee, resting his dutiful shovel across his shoulders. The acting captain shuddered despite himself. His weary subordinates joined him, each approaching with more reluctance than the last as they gathered, as if nosy.
"… God!"
The sudden exclamation, barely audible over the harsh, repetitive slamming of the ongoing downpour was in response to the decomposing carcass. Laden with thick, nearly snow-white cobwebs, covered in feasting, wriggling worms, and bulging, squirming maggots, the corpse was putrid, its skin unnaturally darkened. Whatever facial features might once have been present had not lasted well through the decomposition process. The sands of time, bitterly, had eaten away at them. Torn eyelids, closed shut against one another, played host to indescribable, yellowish-white eggs that seemed to occasionally jerk to life, only to then fall utterly still once more. Other, living insects, opportunistic scavengers attracted by the rot, scuttled away in apparent panic, their shadowy quarters disturbed.
"It's horrible!"
Possessed, or perhaps simply manic from the unfamiliar sight of a corpse in the advanced stages of decomposition, Ishihara's closest subordinate suddenly, swiftly ripped a rogue post, rusted, and separated from its row out from the earth. Lifting it over his head, the happening – whatever it might truly have been – unfolded far too quickly for the acting captain to even act.
Again and again, frenzied, the raging, feverish, shrieking subordinate stabbed the sharpened end of the rogue post deep into the corpse's chest. Rather than crimson lifeblood spurting, gaseous expulsions followed each violent thrust, expelling thick layers of dust from within the cadaver's presumably hollow torso.
Ishihara intervened, tackling the rampaging subordinate with all his might. As the latter fell, the former grasped him by his shoulders, and shook him violently, seeking to free him from his dazed, manic state.
"What do you think you're doing, soldier?! That is the General Superintendent's private property! Are you mad, soldier?! Did your mother raise a madman? I don't recall any damned psychiatric conditions on your sign-up form, you bastard!"
"I never signed up, sir! I was drafted, sir!" The subordinate exclaimed, his voice high-pitched and frantic.
All things happened too quickly. One too many proverbial 'event flags' being triggered, one after the other, forming into some cosmic domino effect. As each piece tumbled behind the next, the world changed. Possibilities formed and aborted themselves. Divine intervention? The workings of the universe, based on scientific formulae? Happenstance? None could have known, for certain.
None could have known for certain what would come to pass as a stray bolt of lightning, streaking down from the Heavens above as the clapping of rolling thunder, roaring like some territorial animal, struck the rogue post protruding from that rotting cadaver, exposed to the elements beyond its hastily dug, insect-infested grave.
"What in—?!"
Ishihara stopped speaking, stopped moving, as his efforts to turn in place and visualize his surroundings failed. Bluish-white sparks leapt from the burning, metal post, still awkwardly protruding some feet out from the six-foot-deep grave.
What none standing upon the earth above witnessed was the arcing currents of electricity hyperactively leaping across the corpse's decomposing form, causing it to shudder. Fingers twitched, and grub-covered wrinkles began to twitch about, rippling across blackened skin and exposed tissue.
Deep within the decaying brain, consciousness flickered in and out. A living slideshow of carnage flickered past in the mind's eye, one 'frame' after the other. Death, brutal butchery, an unrelenting hunt. A persecution of the masses. A torturing of the drug-abusing, alcohol-consuming, fornicating plague that had taken his life from him; the pestilence that had turned him into the monster that, again, drew long, shallow breaths.
A distant voice spoke. Its meaning was vague at first. Sounds, certainly, but no words. Like the feral babbling of a wild man who had no concept of language. In time, the meaningless derived meaning. The voice, soft, gentle, seemed to beckon him back.
"Wake up."
Familiar happenings flashed past; and yet he was a part of them. The shrieking woman, back pressed against the white-tiled wall of her bathroom's claustrophobic shower fell limp as the axe's sharpened head, rushing downward, effortlessly cleaved through her skull, spilling lifeblood and pulsating grey matter. Dripping downward from her agape mouth, a vile mixture of blood and saliva escaped, mixing with the water pooling around her bare feet.
Darkness came and went, like the cycle of day and night passing in mere seconds. The 'scene' shifted yet again.
"Wake up."
He threw the covers aside, and thrust the enormous, gleaming carving knife deep into the throat of the sleeping couple's male half. His eyes' lids shot open, as his lips parted; he gasped and gurgled, lifeblood spurting from the wound like a fountain. The couple's female half awoke with a start; the shambling, rotting corpse that had only just taken her boyfriend's life leapt across the bed, reddened eyes staring into her own from behind the faded, cracked goalkeeper mask it wore. Its hands wrapped around her throat, and, with a single, swift motion, her neck was snapped.
"Wake up."
No remorse. No regret. No feeling. They all had to die. The extermination would never end. Every and any mortal who crossed his path would be sent directly into Death's cold, waiting embrace. As Her arms would wrap around them, bony, to the touch like walking without clothing on a dreadfully freezing winter's evening, he delivered them, like a loyal hound fetching the newspaper for his master.
They would not leave him alone. They would continue to intrude. They would continue to encroach upon his domain, and use their vile substances, and engage in their vile, reproductive acts. The sort of disgust that crept into his guts was nearly enough to drive vomit from his moldering, blackened, shriveled stomach. Disgusting, foul-hearted cretins undeserving of the gift of life.
"Wake up."
The mountain of corpses beneath him – how he'd found his way to this place, he couldn't have been sure – towered over the great, erupting mountains that surrounded him, forming a great, bumpy ridge. The landscape, blackened, charred beyond recovery, was dotted not with great, old trees but with structures formed from the rotting bones of the damned. A twisting path, like some macabre highway, paved with the bone marrow of the fallen, approached his monumental achievement. Some of the corpses twitched. Others simply laid still, lifeblood fleeing their open wounds.
"Please wake up."
They all deserved it.
He was not alone, it seemed. He turned, his great, broad shoulders casting writhing darkness across his mountain of jittering, writhing, pulsing trophies. She was much smaller than him, by several feet. Elderly, shrinking in stature.
Her short, snow-white hair was naturally curly. The eldered woman's rosy cheeks seemed so far away. Even if he tried to reach out, he might never lay even a finger's blackened tip upon them. Her loose, ocean-blue sweater was filthy, plastered with mud and stained by hardened patches of spilled blood. Her trousers, equally as poor in terms of wear, seemed to have been ripped and sullied in much the same fashion.
Regardless, he would recognize her anywhere. He could never forget a loving, gentle face like that. The only soul that had ever loved him. The only person who had ever treated him as anything more than a dumb, ridiculous-looking creature undeserving of love, or the most basic forms of human decency.
"Can you hear me?"
He nodded. The goalkeeper mask strapped to his head, the only shield he could have to protect him from the jeers, the pointing, and the cruel screeds afforded him two, small portals through which he could view her, in all of her endless beauty. Her transcendent magnificence. How someone so beautiful could birth a child so hideous he did not know.
"My boy…"
She smiled. Warm, welcoming, the sort of smile a mother would wear upon her features as she welcomed her only, beloved son home.
"Mommy's special boy. Did you know that? You are, and you always will be, mommy's special boy. Mommy is… Mommy is so proud of you… Jason."
A quizzical tilt of the head was all the response that Jason could offer to his beloved mother.
"You're trapped in your own mind, Jason. This is all a dream. It's time for mommy's special boy to wake up, now. Mommy has need of you, Jason. Your work isn't done. Not yet. The time to rest is over. Come to mommy. Come to mommy, my special boy… Come to mommy. Walk to mommy. Mommy loves her special boy, oh so much…"
Un-life commenced, as the cadaver's eyelids shot open, exposing veiny, discolored eyeballs, still held tightly in their sockets.
His arms shot up, as hands grasped the rogue post jammed deep into his torso. With one quick, fluid motion, it was removed. In the same, passing moments, the wound healed. Regeneration that would have taken an average, everyday human's cellular structure years to repair occurred in a matter of seconds.
Jason Voorhees rose from the grave with a leap much uncharacteristic of a rotting corpse; much of that rot was being reversed, actively. Exposed tendons and musculature were soon obscured by layers of blackened flesh forming over, and across them. An unprecedented rate of cellular reconstruction.
An unrelenting Ishihara shouted, at the pinnacle of his lungs, "FIRE!"
Armour-piercing rounds did little to slow the monstrosity stomping forward, tattered, torn clothing shifting about with each bullet that bit into Jason's flesh. Almost immediately, a subordinate fell victim; Jason's enormous hands fell upon his victim's neck, and, with a single motion, the living revenant simply ripped the armoured head from its shoulders, spinal cord, and all.
"Fall back!" Ishihara called out, as he rushed forward, readying the semi-automatic shell attachment beneath his firearm's muzzle. The chance for retaliation was not destined to be his. A mighty thrust of the revenant's arm was all it took for Jason to forcibly push the entire appendage deep into Ishihara's guts, catching him off-guard. The revenant's digits grasped tightly onto pulsating, internal organs, and ripped them from their fleshy containment without effort.
Each fell before the last, until there were none left; the final met their end as the same, rogue post that had resurrected Jason Voorhees now found its sharpened, mud-caked tip buried deep within the writhing, gurgling subordinate's skull. A single, forceful tug pulled the makeshift weapon free from its lodging. Gripping the weapon, tightly, both hands' digits curled tightly, almost possessively around its shaft, Jason looked to the now-abandoned aircraft. Blinking lights, whitish-yellow in coloration, caught his attention. The revenant's reddened eyes rose and fell as he observed the lights' hypnotic, perhaps exotic, dancing.
Approaching, the aircraft opened itself up to him. Jason took a moment to cautiously observe the craft, before stepping in, makeshift spear, as it was, at the ready.
White; everything was white, sterile, almost blindingly bright. The aircraft's deployment deck - small as it might have been - with its cramped rows of seats, facing opposite one another, were all white. Maddening white. The walls, the lowered ceilings, the metallic flooring. White. Painfully white.
"I take it some… Complications… Occurred with the strike team I had deployed."
The voice – soft, melodic, somewhere in tone between that of a man and a woman – seemed to speak from everywhere at once. Jason looked about, eyes darting here, there, and back again.
"No matter. Their lives were ultimately expandable. We do not know each other. That time will come, later… I, am Aleister Crowley."
Was Jason supposed to recognize that name? The revenant tilted his head, curious, and listened on.
"There is much my City can learn from you. Though it does not concern you in any way, conflict looms in the distant future. A conflict I intend to win. Your capacities for near-infinite cellular regeneration are of interest to me. Supply my scientists with the data they require, and I will personally see to it that your endless bloodlust is… Continually sated."
Without another word from the mysterious, formless strange referring to themselves as "Aleister Crowley", the aircraft suddenly took flight, without warning, without expectation. Were Jason a less durable creature, he would have surely taken a great backwards fall. There was no pilot aboard this vessel, as the revenant clearly observed. The aircraft took to the skies seemingly of its own accord.
"Jason-san," the voice spoke once more, breaking the short-lived silence. "Check the cockpit. A gift. A symbol of our newfound agreement."
Though Jason held no real trust for this formless, unidentifiable voice that seemed to poke and prod him just when he would settle back into his adapted, uncomfortable silence, he followed its instruction, regardless. Ducking beneath the lowered, thick-plated ceiling, passing through the hollow entranceway of the entirely, pure-white aircraft and into the sterile, utilitarian cockpit, the blackened, pained revenant slowly bent into a crouch, as a familiar sight made itself visible before him, resting innocuously, as if purposely placed, on the uninhabited pilot's seat.
A brilliantly clean, unmarred goalkeeper's mask.
"This is awful!" Kamijou cried aloud.
"Tou-ma," the small, silver-haired nun standing nearby curiously remarked, peering just barely over her guardian's shoulder.
"Another vending machine stole my money! SUCH MISFORTUUUNNNNEEEEEEEE!"