For all those who are like "Who's this Josh character..." I'll be introducing him later in the story...
I can tell you now... Demon and his team are not the only people who are going to be showing up from his universe...
Naughtbeast
Chapter 9:
Where am I?...
Demon tried to get a bearing on where he was… before suddenly being shaken awake from his confusion.
"COME ON MAN! WE'RE IN A BLOODY WAR!" screamed a man in his ear. Demon opened his eyes to see Josh standing over him, trying desperately to shake him awake. He was wearing the typical grunt armour, a white band on his right shoulder displayed a red cross, symbolising that he was a field medic.
"Come on man… get up… we got to get to the extraction!" he shouted as he shoved a carbine into Demon's arms before heading to a tree and shooting out at something he couldn't see.
"How did you get on Remnant?" questioned Demon, checking the clip of the carbine and racking a bullet.
"Remnant? What the hell are you talking about? Come on… get your head back in the game!" he shouted before ducking back behind the tree, dodging a hail of bullets. As Demon looked around he saw he was no longer on Remnant, the trees of the Emerald Forest were gone and he was laying hunched against a wall in some building, Josh was pressed against the side of a doorway. He looked down and saw he was wearing his Militia Grunt uniform…
What the hell?...
He tried to move his body but he couldn't. Without him wanting to, his body began running out of the door, blind-firing his carbine, and sprinted to another building on the other side of the street he was on. He couldn't see much as he was still trying to figure out where the hell he was.
As the world slowly came into focus around him, he could barely see anything other than what he didn't want to see. As he looked across the street a few blocks up he saw his childhood friend, Harald, get crushed in the hand of a Titan, his bloody remains staining the bitumen. He grimaced on the inside, his body not really showing any reactions. As he sprinted to another building just up the street he saw his cousin, Ullecile, die from a rocket slamming into her and sending her limbs everywhere. He continued to watch the bloodbath unfold before him, unable to do anything other than watch. As he continued Josh came back into view… but something was terribly off. He had a massive bullet wound in his chest, right above his heart, and half his jaw was hanging off, bloody tendons keeping it from falling off.
"What's wrong Demon?" asked Josh, tilting his head slightly in question, causing his tongue to loll out the side of his jaw.
"Josh, you're…" he tried to spit out, finally regaining control of his body…
"Half dead… yea I know… but then again… you usually don't do that to your victims do you?"
"What are you talking about?" asked Demon, taking a step back from the hideous abomination.
"Don't act like you don't know… you murdered all those people… and you don't even remember their faces… You're just a heartless murderer…" after the last few words, Josh spat and sent a glob of blood and spit into Demon's eyes.
"What the hell man!" shouted Demon as he quickly rubbed the blood out of his eyes. When he opened them, however, he wasn't anywhere anymore. He was floating in what looked to be a bottomless void, a faint white light surrounding him. As he waited for a bit longer he felt something tug at his leg. He looked down and nearly vomited from what he saw. Grabbing onto his leg was the top-half of an IMC grunt, the bottom half being non-existent. In a hasty attempt to try and get rid of whatever it was, he punched it right across the side of the face, sending its helmet flying. It didn't let go but it revealed something far more sinister. As he looked at the grunt that was clawing at his legs, the thing that stared back was nothing. It had a weird fleshy face with no mouth, eyes, nose or any other facial features. His mind went into overdrive and he hastily kicked the thing away, causing it to fall into the weird black void and disappear.
WHAT THE HELL?...
Before he could think about anything more he heard strange muffled groans from behind him. He turned to see thousands more of the things slowly clambering their way to him, all in various states of death. Some had no legs, no arms… or both, crawling towards him with their chins. He turned and started to run… but it did nothing to move him away from the horrors. As he uselessly tried to run, a feminine voice filled his head, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once.
"You did this to them… they were just innocents… and you slaughtered them"
"THEY TRIED TO KILL ME… AND THEY WOULD HAVE KILLED OTHERS!" he tried to protest, seeing the horrors gaining ground.
"No… they just watched as you mercilessly cut them down… they had families to go back to… but now they're never going to see them again…"
"I didn't have a choice!" he argued, knowing it was a losing battle.
"Hahahaha… You always had a choice Demon… you knew that you could stop… but you didn't… you fed on their anger… their sadness… their fear… You're just a monster… a murderer"
The voice faded, leaving Demon to his own thoughts… which were interrupted by the horrors catching up. They tore through his clothing and began ripping his skin to shreds, tearing his toes and fingers off. He tried to scream or at least make some noise but his vocal cords were severed as one slashed his throat. They swarmed all over him and he felt nothing but pain…
*END FLASHBACK*
Demon slowly came back into consciousness, the smells of a hospital surrounding him. He tried to lift his arm but could barely even move his fingers. He wriggled his toes and was glad to feel that he had all 10. His head felt like someone had decided to send a railway spike through it… with a sledgehammer. He waited for a while and his arms slowly regained feeling. He twiddled his fingers and reached up to feel his face… there was only one problem. He didn't have a mask…
His mind immediately lost all semblance of grogginess or a headache and he regained control of all his muscles. He opened his eyes and looked around at where he was, ensuring that he made as little noise as possible. He saw that he was sitting on a patients table in a hospital room, various monitoring machines sitting to his left, the beeping of the heart monitor filling the room. As he continued to look he saw that his armour, helmet and weapons were sitting on a table to his right, the weapons were just in arms reach.
As he continued looking around the room he saw someone sitting at one of the chairs near the front of the room just in front of the door, reading a magazine. (Raven) She had long, black hair and a strange grey mask covered her face, covering it completely. A large odachi (big katana) in a sheath was lying against the chair next to her and she was wearing what looked to be battle armour resembling that worn by the local tribes on his planet. Another thing he noticed was that her armour was coloured black and red… just the same as his.
He silently reached over and picked up his combat knife, cutting a makeshift bandana from the sheeting and then tying it over his eyes, ensuring that no one would see them. He activated the pulse from the implants in his eyes, and the room around him was highlighted in a dull grey, the woman's skeleton highlighted in a dull red. He reached over and grabbed his pistol, aimed it straight at the intruder and pulled back the hammer.
At the noise, the person looked up from the magazine, tilted her head a bit, then closed it and put it on the seat next to her. She stood up, picked up her odachi, and began walking to him.
"Don't take another step…" he warned, training the reticule right on her head.
"That won't be much use… I took the bullets out" she said, continuing to walk towards him.
Since he didn't have his helmet on he couldn't see his ammo counter, so he tested it by pulling the trigger. As the hammer came down, it was accompanied by a click… and a load groan from Demon.
"If you're going to kill me… please make it quick… and don't bring my team into this…" he said, conceding that this woman could probably kill him in his weak state.
"I'm not here to kill you…" she said, matter-of-factly, as she finally got to his side.
"Then why are you here?" he questioned, not really sure what to do.
"I've been watching you since you came into this world… and you have intrigued me."
"How so…?"
"You don't have an aura yet you managed to take on creatures that should have killed you easily…"
"Aura? The hell is that?"
"Exactly… you come into this world with absolutely no knowledge of anything… and you still manage to survive…"
"Your point is?"
"I've only known two other people who have come to this world and survived… Your uniform reminds me of something from my past… yet I know that it would be impossible for it to get here… and furthermore…" she stepped over and took out a necklace from within his uniform "what's this"
As soon a Demon saw what she was touching he instantly went hostile.
"DON'T TOUCH THAT!" he screamed as he jumped off the bed, trying to punch her down.
She nimbly dodged every blow and pulled out her odachi, kicking out his legs and putting it to his throat.
"Where did you get this from?" she asked, holding the necklace in front of his eyes. It was a simple necklace, but it meant a lot to him. It was a cog with a smaller one on the inside with a wing coming off to the left, made of bone from one of the beasts of his homeworld.
"It's my mother's… NOW GIVE IT BACK!" he said, twisting it out of her grip, while grabbing the handle of the sword. As soon as he was out of her grasp, he jumped back and got into a brawler's stance, letting the necklace dangle out of his right fist, expecting a fight. Instead, she was just standing there, loosely holding onto her weapon, staring at the necklace. She slowly raised her sword up and pointed it directly at Demon.
"Are you lying!" she said softly, as if scared to ask.
"Why would I lie to you? There would be no point, you would obviously know… you knew I was from another world afterall…"
She stood for a moment before putting her odachi back in its sheath.
"Your mother… what happened to her?" she asked with a calm voice.
"Why should I tell you?" he retorted, holding tighter to the necklace.
"If you answer… I will leave…" she said, her voice much calmer than before.
"I will indulge you in that one luxury… it does not need to be a secret. When I was young, I was living with my mother and uncle after my father left before I was born. One day, on my birthday, in fact, I was off-world with my cousins when the city I lived in was bombed. The entire colony was wiped off the face of the planet and the only indication that anything had happened was a crater in the ground… I was 6 when it happened…"
Demon didn't really care what he told her, he couldn't hide from his past anymore…
"After my 16th Birthday, I joined the military and tried to find out anything about what happened on my planet… but no one knew anything… Nothing was recovered from my village…"
"The name of your world? What is it?" she asked, her voice seeming as though she was pleading.
"Gearra Prime"
The strange lady froze solid at the name, not moving an inch. As he listened carefully he heard her breathing heavily and could hear crying. After a couple of awkward seconds, life seemed to come back into her and her breathing came back to normal. She strode over to the door and opened it, moving to step out.
"Wait!" called Demon.
She turned to him, still not talking.
"At least tell me your name…"
She stared at him for a moment before replying.
"You'll find out eventually… until then… I hope you find your mother…"
As she turned and left he had time to glimpse a symbol on her belt… and his world came crashing down. It was the same symbol from his necklace…
Mum?...
