Once again, I have been procrastinating in writing this chapter. Do I have an excuse? No. Did I do it anyway? Yes. Anyhow, this will be a more fight-heavy chapter, and it will be more similar to my original version of this, in the sense that it will be Kaneki vs the Hunters. Except, instead of letting him kill everyone, I'm going to make this a little more… interesting. Hopefully. Anyway, I hope you'll enjoy this!
It had been a long time since her father had ordered her to use the Hunters to actually hunt down a person. However, after the enlightening discussion they had abruptly been called to by Hades, of all people, she couldn't find it in herself to go against his orders. Somehow, a mortal had gotten hold of a blade that was powerful enough to kill gods. When questioned about how he had come into the knowledge of this, the God of Death looked a little sheepish before he explained how long he had known about their new bane.
"I do not know his name, for he never gave one. He always hid behind a mask, one that you would recognize from a mile away, if you were to see it. Wherever he went, destruction and chaos followed. I first met him in what was possibly the most explosive way I have ever met a mortal. The ceiling of my throne room collapsed, and he fell face first into the floor, that impossible sword on his back and his clothes clean despite the debris that had fallen along with him. He took one look at me, muttered something about taking a wrong turn before running out the front door. I attempted to track him down using the Furies, only to call them off when they saw him wander into the Fields of Punishment and disappear afterwards. I assumed he had stumbled into something that had ended his life." Hades paused, lost in some memory unseen to the rest of them, shaken and almost a completely different person from the imposing figure that he portrayed himself as usually, shaking his head before continuing with a grimace.
"I was wrong. A few hours later, it came to my notice that those imprisoned in the Fields of Punishment were somehow staging a prison break. Everyone had been freed from their respective punishments, with no explanation for how they had been. It took me forever to hunt all of them down, and I have the suspicion that a few still remain in hiding, biding their time until the search for them stops. All signs pointed to the man who had somehow fallen into the Underworld being the one to free them all, the various testimonies we managed to coerce out of the recaptured prisoners confirming that idea. I told my subjects to keep an eye out for him and bring him to me when he was found. That was four years ago. He was a ghost. One day, I received the news that somehow, he had fallen into Tartarus." he paused to allow the incredulity of the situation to settle in. Artemis' mind raced with questions, the biggest of them all was how the mortal man had managed to survive literal hell?
"That was when I figured out that he could kill gods. Sons and daughters of Nyx, who had been content to stay in the pit, crawled out of their home to fall on their knees in front of me and beg for my help. They spoke of a masked man with white hair and clothes that never got torn, a monster in human form that wandered the pit. At first, the monsters were content to fight and try to kill him. Then they began to stay away because of how often they died at the hands of the man who never faltered. The worst part was that some monsters never came back from death, even in Tartarus. They stayed how he left them, usually in tiny pieces. As you all already know, time passes differently down there. They spoke of years hiding from the one who had claimed the pit as his own, for when the boldest members of them stepped forward to end the threat before it could truly begin...they died like humans. Screaming, in agony and never coming back. I had hoped that he would stay down in the depths and one day, something or someone would cut him down to size." Hades chuckled bitterly, spreading his hands and gesturing to nothing in particular.
"I was wrong." the Olympians discussed the issue for minutes that felt like hours, the more bloodthirsty ones like Ares(male pig that he was) wanting to fight the man, while the more knowledge hungry ones like Athena wanted to subdue him. In the end, Zeus decided that they needed information. In a move that showed his rarely used intellect, her father had ordered her to take her Hunters and do what they did best. Hunt.
Showing up at the man's last known location, they were prepared to have to track their target down and relinquish him of his weapon. Thankfully, and rather conveniently, the male was sleeping peacefully in the middle of what seemed to have been a battlefield, considering the sheer amount of monster dust on the ground surrounding him. He was sleeping in a sitting position, leaning against the sword that Hades claimed could bring down gods. The sword was unsettling, at the very least. It looked organic and pulsed a soft red, almost impossible to see in broad daylight, but the stormy weather(kudos to her father and uncle being tantrum throwing adult babies) and her own enhanced eyesight and instincts allowed her to clearly see the unnerving glow. It made the sword feel alive. Quietly, her most experienced Hunters fanned out in a circle around the prone male, fitting arrow to bow and locking on to their target. A few seconds after they had completed their formation, the man's eyes opened and he jerked back, head colliding with its resting surface. The only sign that he was not expecting their arrival was the slight widening of his eyes when he noticed the situation he was in. Standing up slowly, he pulled his sword out of the ground, holding it in both hands like he was preparing for a single powerful swing. Internally, Artemis snorted at the gesture, wondering if the stories Hades had told them were true. She raised a hand to signal her Hunters to fire, pausing only when the male's eyes, which had been lazily looking around, homed in on one of her girls. He smirked and suddenly the air around him changed.
He had been oddly intimidating before. Now, he radiated an aura that was essentially just power given form. She quickly checked to see which Hunter he had been looking at, pausing for a fraction of a second to do so, but that fraction of time, insignificant to mere mortals, was more than enough for him to make his move. As arrows whistled through the air, he swung. The sword cut through the arrows in its way, somehow cutting through the very air itself afterwards. She watched with no small amount of shock and awe when the air rippled, blasting back her Hunters with the sheer force alone. She was almost swept up with the flow as well, only managing to prevent herself from flying through the air like some of her more unfortunate girls by anchoring herself to the ground with a hunting knife. The mortal(?) man pushed an obviously dislocated shoulder back into place with the only reaction being a grin and a slight shudder as he forced the bone back into its proper position. Slipping on a mask(clearly the one Hades had talked about, it was...odd at the very least) with a toothy grin, he moved much faster than a mortal man could have hoped to move. To regular humans or the untrained eye, he would have become a blur of motion. TO her own, she followed his every move with some effort, drawing her bow to put an arrow in his back, which was quickly followed by a second, courtesy of Zoe, who had been able to survive the blastwave with minor hindrance herself. The projectiles sprouting from his body did nothing to stop his motion, the man kicking off the surface of the ground so hard that he left cracks and holes in the ground. Growling, she ran after him with both hunting knives drawn, managing to catch up when he reached the edge of the forest in Camp Half-Blood. Before her weapons could sink into his flesh, he turned around abruptly and kicked her in the stomach. It felt like she was being hit with a sledgehammer built by Hephaestus. She gagged and stopped long enough for the man to shoot her an almost mocking look that made her blood boil with rage. She leapt after him, hunting instincts singing out for her to show him who was truly the one who was better here. They dueled while running, a single sword against two hunting knives. Despite the fact that she should have had the upper hand considering it was two weapons against one, the man's reflexes were astounding, parrying her blades rather than attempting to block them. Sometimes, a parry would be done with a sudden amount of force that would give him a brief moment to sneak a punch or kick in. With each hit was another blow to her pride, but she remained calm and continued her onslaught, knowing that he would slip up eventually(all things considered, it was a wonder he had managed to survive so long as he was more of hopping from one point to the next, boosting himself off trees to get the slightest headstart over her) and was rewarded a few minutes later.
When he had attempted to kick off another tree to gain another few precious inches of distance, between the two of them, his foot dug a hole into the brittle root. Cursing at the whiplash, the man tripped and tumbled, leg wrenched out of the tree by his sheer momentum alone. Artemis pounced as he faltered, a knife driving through his hand and into the ground while the other cut his Achilles tendons to prevent him from moving. Crying out, the first real reaction she had seen from him in the short time that they had been acquainted, he rolled over to meet her gaze. She drew two fresh knives and pinned him down, pressing her foot against his chest with more than enough godly strength to make him wheeze and she could hear his ribs creaking at the pressure. Despite all that, he still clung on to his sword, lashing out even though his position was terrible and the swings were easily batted away. Growing tired of his antics, she cut off the hand holding the sword and tossed it to one side, ignoring the gouts of blood that spurted from the wound. A single silver eye met her own, and she was startled by how similar it was in colour to hers. She pressed a knife to his neck and smiled when he stopped his struggles almost immediately, uncovered eye flicking to the tiny thing that could kill him with a single flick and back to her face. A beat of silence passed before he spoke, casual considering the severity of the situation he had managed to land himself in.
"This was not how I envisioned my day to end."
"What way did you think it would end, boy? You thought that you could challenge the gods and get away with it?"
"I wasn't challenging the gods little girl. I was keeping the promise I made." she twisted the knife in his hand at the jab and he groaned, flesh and bone giving way before the godly metal. When she was satisfied that he understood his place, she started questioning him, waiting for her Hunters to catch up(she would have to train them in recovering from bad situations, it would be more than bad if someone else were to pull a similar trick and kill some of them instead of just running away.
"What do you mean that you were keeping the promise that you made?" he laughed at the question, wincing even as he did so.
"I promised a lady that I would protect her from anyone who attempted to harm her. Had to break a lot of rules to help her today, including the ones about not interfering with this world." she pondered the answer, wondering how insane this man was, to challenge beings that had been around before the thought of him even existed, all in order to protect a woman. Even still, she acknowledged his bravery and dedication.
"Who are you? Where did you get that blade?"
"I've gone by many names. People call me Kaneki, only one person I know calls me Ken. Hades has a very unflattering name for me that is incredibly accurate and I need to ask him how he knows that name one day. All things considered, it was nice to meet you Artemis-san. I've always wondered what the gods were like in real life. You've exceeded my expectations by a mile and a half." she preened slightly at the compliment, mentally putting his name down as Ken Kaneki(logic dictated that most people would call him by his surname, and the one person that called him otherwise was probably the person he fought to protect). A sense of suspicion overcame her when she realized a discrepancy in his words earlier.
"How do you know my name. And why were you smiling at my Lieutenant?" if it was possible for someone to smile from ear to ear, Kaneki would be doing so. His eyes quickly flicked to a spot behind her, before someone else replied for him.
"The answer to both questions is the same milady." she turned around to meet an arrow aimed directly at her chest. The Lieutenant of the Hunt, Zoe Nightshade, her longest companion, a sister in all but blood had the unholy sword bound to her hip and a bow drawn back, ready to fire. Her mind briefly froze at the act of betrayal before she reacted to the threat. A knife knocked the bow, making it face skywards and making the act of severing the bowstring with her second knife a much easier task. Before she could confront her Lieutenant, the man lying beneath her suddenly arched his back, throwing off her balance and ripping his hand from the ground while doing so. She met the punch with her knife, eyes widening in shock when the second fist collided with her jaw, no sign of the bloodied stump that had been Kaneki's left hand apart from the slight red tinge to his sleeve. She reeled back, foot shifting off his chest. He moved like a dancer, slipping out from underneath her to grab her head and bring her into a headbutt that left her ears ringing and caused her vision to go blurry. Driving the knife into his ribs, she was satisfied to hear the retching noise he made, but not so much when he spat blood into her eyes and further obscured her vision. Leaving the knife in him and drawing two more, she kicked him away and turned around to deal with her Lieutenant for Zoe to slash her with the sword. It wasn't a deep cut, more of a grave than anything, but the strength was sapped from her limbs in an instant and she suddenly struggled to draw breath as her attacker watched with a trace of guilt in her eyes. Collapsing when her knees gave out under her, she watched her Lieutenant throw the sword back to its owner, who was removing the knife from his ribs very slowly. Artemis watched, mouth agape, when Zoe rolled her eyes and walked over to rip the knife out in one quick motion, smacking the taller male in the head when he started griping about it. The duo turned their attention onto her, Kaneki removing his mask and slinging the blade over his shoulder while Zoe knelt down to check the wound, flinching when Artemis slapped at the offending limb.
"Zoe, why?"
"Sorry milady, but I could not let you capture him. While his capture was because of his own stupidity," Zoe leaned over to smack the head of the giggling bastard, "Zeus would kill him and I cannot stand for that."
"So you betrayed your mistress and the Hunt?" Zoe's eyes hardened at the accusation, a hand curling into a fist. She gradually relaxed when Kaneki placed a hand on her shoulder(and Artemis felt a mixture of betrayal and fury at how comfortable her oldest partner seemed to be with a man's touch) and spoke in a tone of absolute conviction.
"Know this milady, I would never betray you. One day, you will understand why I have done the things I have done today. Until then, you will just have to trust me when I say that I am doing this for the greater good." a sharp whistle cut through the air and the duo took their attention off her, tensing up and looking in the general direction of the sound. Kaneki glanced back at the prone goddess, something akin to pity in his gaze.
"We need to go. The Hunt will be here soon and I would rather not fight them unless I have to."
"Don't worry Artemis-san, Nightshade here will kill me if I harm even a single hair on the rest of your Hunt."
"We need to go. Now."
"Fine, fine. Bye!" the duo quickly disappeared, leaving her to wonder how her world had fallen apart so quickly.