Ch. 24
The thunder loudly crashed as the rain reached an intense crescendo. The glares three of the four combatants gave were strong enough to paralyze any bystander that could have been there in fear. But it would not be as strong as one fighter was currently down for the count. Though, nobody seemed to be moving an inch yet. As Dio put the Corpse Part down, he turned his attention back to Toga's body, her face towards him.
"Toga," Dio began to speak, "You have fought splendidly. Your skills no doubt put many other Vampires to shame." The boiled anger was cooling as sadness became visible on his face as he then looked back up to his two opponents and continued to talk.
"Is this… loss? This pain…is this what you felt when you lost your father, Jonathan? When Zeppeli and Dire both passed on?"
"I thought Vampires cared little for the emotions of humans," Jonathan responded, "But yes, this is what it feels like to lose someone close."
"Except she's not dead," Bakugo interrupted, just a bit quieter than his normal brashness, "She's still breathing."
The pain on Dio's face quickly subsided as he began to laugh uncontrollably. It grew to a loud cackle that matched the crackle of the thunder and lightning outside. To anyone else, the sight of such morbid laughter would make their skin crawl, causing them to turn around and high tail it out of there. But Jonathan and Bakugo stayed put, watching for their opponent's next move.
And that move was a shock to them. For from the same pocket dimension of his clothing the Corpse Parts emerged from, he brought forth...
"The Stone Mask!" Jonathan and Bakugo shouted.
The events that happened next were nearly instantaneous, leaving little time for Bakugo and Jonathan to act.
"You're right about the fact she's still breathing, Katsuki!" Dio responded, propping both himself and Toga up from the ground. "Her injuries were not enough to kill her!" One of her knives appeared in his right hand as it penetrated her stomach.
"So why not finish the job and make her a high-ranking member of my undead army?!" As it was near-instantly pulled out, leaving sufficient blood on the blade, Dio opened his mouth and revealed his fangs as he bit into Toga's neck, a moment similar to the vampire movies of high notoriety. The knife's blood spilled onto the mask, now covering her face. Stone tendrils quickly shot from the mask and inserted themselves into Toga's cranium. The holes for the eyes glowed a bright, bloody red, as more blinding light emanated from it. While the light would normally have a slightly blue tinge to it, the light that came from this mask was a pure white.
Jonathan and Bakugo covered their eyes from the light as much as they could without fully looking away. They could not see much else other than the gray mask and the red light from the eyes, yet Jonathan could sense Dio had not moved an inch from where he was earlier.
When the white blinding white light finally began to dissipate, the two Heroes lowered their hands as they adjusted to the lighting. What they saw was a Toga reborn, one free of the injuries that were inflicted upon her moments ago. Instead of the old school uniform she dawned, what she was now wearing was a fairly-large white English gown with a red top. The gown was a clean white which depicted a beautiful landscape of numerous Sakurasou flowers in the traditional Japanese artistic style. However, the purple flowers' beauty were eclipsed by the bloodied birds, some cut open and others bitten at certain places, that lay on the ground in the fabric artwork. It also looked as if blood was splattered over the gown itself.
As her eyes slowly opened, the golden yellow in her irises had become a crimson red. And so too did her mouth open to reveal the massive grin on her face.
"Hello again, Katsuki!" the newly-minted vampire spoke, a twisted sense of joy beaming from her face.
"Well someone seems even more insane than they were before," Bakugo remarked, seemingly confident, though concern was hidden on his face and detectable in his voice.
"Oh, on the contrary," Toga remarked, her teeth and nails sharper than before, "My senses have never been clearer!"
"Her human body was a weak vessel with which she channeled her bloodlust," Dio remarked. "But with that vessel strengthened, she can now channel it to her heart's content!"
The two Vampires took a great leap towards the gaps of the upstairs railway broken from the earlier conflict.
"Now, how shall we finally finish this sanguine story?" Dio asked towards Toga.
"Something about draining the blood out of our corpses for the Noble One's power!" Bakugo yelled, "You've said a billion times! How about we just kick your asses and the Corpse Part instead?!"
"Geez, Katsuki," Toga complained, "You took all the fun out of it."
"It does not matter.." Dio remarked
"We end this…" Jonathan said, his sword once again drawn from his sheath.
"HERE AND NOW!" All four of them simultaneously shouted, as sword met knife, gauntlet met a freezing hand, all four at the same time. Now the final showdown could truly begin.