Wrestling the demon was never something you really got used to. It got easier and easier to do, but you never got used to it, and it was always draining. It wasn't so much a physical drain, but a mental exhaustion, a tiredness that creeped into the corners of one's mind and lingered there. A tiredness that no amount of sleep could really fix.
He was lucky to have Akakyu, he wasn't sure how she kept up her energy, but being around her made everything far more bearable. Were it not for her, he wouldn't have a social life, he'd just stay in bed all day when off the clock. She had all the energy in the world to go and explore, he kept her grounded, they were good for each other.
Together they had the second-lowest overall collateral rates. Shironi had the lowest. Senpai would probably have the lowest if he wanted to, but he was old enough to not have any patience for uppity execs. It was understandable of course, but none of them were quite as valuable as Senpai, so they couldn't afford to make the Shogun short-tempered like he could.
He turned and walked past another security line, Akakyu stomping in front of him and clearing a path through the allied security agents. As his optics trailed over them, his mind was filled with visions of their death.
Rip apart, tear, cut, shoot, claw, crush, punch, kick, splatter, murder, rip, sunder, shatter, eviscerate, blend…
On and on it went, for each and every living thing he saw. Five security agents, each of them allies, each of them slightly cowering behind defensive lines set up for the intruder, each of them he was forced to imagine killing in hundreds of ways. He turned his gaze away and kept marching on. His claws were restrained another time, his will kept his murderous curse in check.
The DaiOni did not hate the world, it only wanted to murder it. It wanted each and everything that lived to die, and it wanted to be the thing to kill them all. Each and everything he saw, he was forced to know all the ways in which he could kill it, in which he could extinguish its life.
Allies, enemies, unaligned, it didn't matter. All things were things a DaiOni wished to kill. When interred within a DaiOni, one was aligned with its will. It's will to kill creation.
Senpai was able to live in the DaiOni, seemingly without any strain on his part, the rest of them weren't quite so tough. Even Shironi had demonstrated strain in handling the frame, Senpai had only ever been invigorated by the experienced, it was within the DaiOni that he seemed the most cheerful and relaxed.
To this day, no other DaiOni jockey was quite sure how he so easily handled it. Midoriso had once joked Senpai was already a demon, and the DaiOni was just the closest thing to his spiritual body that the world could get to. It was a joke… but sometimes he wondered…
He passed another group of security assets, and their deaths were shown to him one-hundredfold. He could kill them in five-hundred different ways, it would only take half a second…
He passed by them, and his mind cleared again. It was his duty to hold the demon back until the permitted target was found, it was his duty to restrain it. For the sake of his honor, for the sake of his wife, he would hold it back for eternity if he had to.
The stairs down were only wide enough to fit one of them at a time, and they were close to the intruder. When they next emerged upon a floor, it would be time to stand their ground and crush them. He stomped down the stairs as gently as a one-ton warmachine could, and followed her into the open region between staircases.
Arasaka was designed to have many such spaces, staircases alternating sides of the tower in order to give defenders plenty of space to operate, with many regions to assemble defenses and many natural chokepoints.
He turned to evaluate Akakyu, interred in her bright-red frame, gazing at the door into the stairway with an intense energy. She noticed him looking, turned her bright optic towards him…
She tilted her head and gave a happy wave, even though he was within arms reach. His spirit smiled under his body of chrome. The DaiOni gave him no visions of her death, he refused to tolerate them.
He turned his attention back towards the doorway. There was one intruder, his frame was roughly on par with a Dragoon, he carried a monoblade and a Malorian handgun. There was essentially no way for him to actually hurt either of them, so they could afford to take their time with the fight.
With that part handled, their primary goal was to prevent undue harm to the building itself while engaging the target. To minimize collateral damage as much as they could. This means they wouldn't use their more destructive weapons, leaving them with their unarmed capabilities, monoblades, and auto-shotgun if they had to use it. Anything else might blow a hole in the side of the building, which would be unfortunate indeed.
If they caused undue harm to the building itself, it may collapse outright. The Shogun was on the top floor. A collapsed tower would mean he dies. This was understandably unacceptable.
The door opened up, his attention was drawn to it immediately. Perhaps one tenth of a second to draw his attention from his considerations to the sound.
The door took only half a second to open, a figure stepped through, not pausing in its relaxed stride towards them. A silver superchrome body, covered in street leathers, the mask of a red oni over a head covered in golden hair. Some sort of music blared from a set of headphones around its neck.
A dozen visions of its death filled his mind. He knew Akakyu was having similar visions.
One oni, facing two super-oni. It was almost laughable how unfair this was.
The oni spoke as it continued its approach. "Get out of my way, steelheads, I got a corpse to bury."
There wasn't any need to speak, not to something that was about to die.
The DaiOni screamed for the intruder's death. Aoihachi loosened his grip on its leash.
And the fight was on.
—
He glared at the two giant fuckers in front of him, one red, one blue, both ugly. Ten or so feet of pure metal warmachine, looks like Arasaka was bringing out the big guns on him right now. That was fine, he had a pretty big gun of his own.
They looked… familiar to him but he couldn't name where he had seen them before. He remembered seeing something that looked a whole lot like them, but the color was different. He clicked his tongue and ignored the wave of nostalgia and dread.
If Johnny were here, he'd have to convince him to get up and fight. He was just the hand now though, and he didn't need any convincing. Alt was here, Alt needed him to fight, so he'd tear these fuckers apart all day if he had to.
He raised his Malorian about halfway to them, and fired off a testing shot for damage. The wall-breaking bullet exploded out of the gun, flew through the air…
…and bounced off the blue one's armor. It ricocheted into the wall to his right, putting a new foot-long groove into it before stopping. It didn't even put a dent into that armor.
He narrowed his optics and put the gun away in his waist-holster, before putting both arms on the sword. He would take out the Gun when he saw a chance to, he couldn't afford to waste a shot and miss when he only had four bullets left. In the meantime, he had to see what they could do.
"...Was that your best, intruder?" the red one asked with a feminine tone of voice. It sounded a whole lot like it was mocking him, which pissed him off. "You might want to not resist, your death will be quicker then."
He rolled his eyes behind his mask. "Spare me the bullshit and start fighting already." Do these corpos ever shut the fuck up?
They disappeared, his eyes widened, he activated his sandevistan.
Two massive figures were on either side of him, blades extended from their arms, one swinging for his head, the other for his legs.
He jumped, stepping on the top blade and kicking off it to go even higher. The blades were swinging slower than he was expecting… That meant his sandevistan was better, he thinks. He stabbed out with his sword, jabbing the red one in the head and using it to push himself into a kick against the blue one's face.
He flipped through the air, seeing them stagger slightly in slow motion. Definitely a better sandy than them, that was just about his only advantage against them here. The dread creeped up again, why were they so familiar? He had never seen them before in his life.
More importantly, how was he going to kill them? Use the Gun probably, but he needed to save ammo for later. So he needed to hit both of them at the same time if he could.
He landed on the ground, rolling for a moment before picking himself up again and running into a side-room. He would get them to chase him, and then hit them as they came into the room. His sandevistan expired as he drew the Gun from his thigh-holster.
He turned to aim at the doorway, ready to fire at a moment's notice. Several long seconds passed with nothing happening. His finger on the trigger, his eyes on the doorway, his ears taking in the pulsing noise of his own music…
…wait…
He threw himself to the side as one of the massive borgs smashed through the wall directly next to him, a burst of painfully familiar auto-shotgun rounds passing through the space where he just was. He kept running as the rounds followed him, tearing a line through the thinner wall separating this room and the main hallway.
There was one of them, where was the other?
He activated his sandevistan and jumped over the bullets, towards the wall to emerge into the main hallway again. The eyes of the big blue fucker barely tracking him as he moved.
He swung his monoblade as he passed, leaving a nice big slice right through the upper layer of the arm that was currently barking shotgun rounds out at a steady pace. He didn't know if that would hinder the firing at all, but knowing how much Rogue used to bitch at him about keeping the barrels clean, it would probably do something at least.
He lined up a clear back-shot once he was fully behind it, waiting only a moment.
His sandevistan expired. His finger pulled the trigger.
"Boom." said the Gun.
He was sent flying to the side, his body exploding in pain. He flew only for a moment before crashing into the far wall, shattering the asphalt with his body.
He blinked the pain away as fast as he could, wiggling enough to dislodge himself from the wall.
As he fell to the floor, a red clawed foot rose to greet him.
He flew again, crashing through several interior walls before hitting the ground and rolling for a moment. His pain-editors activated, and he pushed himself up.
"F-fuck!" He cursed, the pain apparent even through the editing. He glanced at his condition readout. Right arm yellow, torso yellow, armor on both red.
He couldn't afford to take another hit like that. He looked through the wall he had come through, a Silverhand-sized hole near the top of it.
The real question was, how much damage did that do? He cracked his neck, rolled his shoulders, and started walking forwards, kicking open the doors through each room as he passed, ready to activate his sandevistan at a moment's notice.
One room passed, another hole in the wall.
Two rooms passed, another hole in the wall.
Three rooms passed, another hole in the wall.
He narrowed his eyes at the final door.
A tense moment passed. He got an idea.
He sheathed the monoblade as quietly as he could, drawing the Malorian with his right hand. He activated his sandevistan. Then, with a grin, he loudly began to reload his gun.
The massive red borg burst through the wall, already swinging a monoblade at him. It was trying to hit him before he could reload his 'handgun' and hit them again.
Shame that he had two of them, wasn't it? He already had one of them raised up and ready to fire.
Looks like you just walked into a bullet.
"Boom." said the Gun.
The borg's right arm exploded into a shower of metal, as did the wall behind it, and the wall behind that, all the way out to the edge of the tower. He cursed for a moment, quickly holstering the Gun again, and unsheathing his monoblade.
The reason he didn't get center mass?
The blue borg was still alive, and had just shoved the red one out of the way enough to save it.
His monoblade clashed against its, but he was forced back and onto the ground. He grit his teeth as he tried to push out of the fresh indent he made on the floor.
The massive arm of the blue borg kept him down, even as he strained against it. He could only lift it slightly, his arms shaking all the while. His sandevistan deactivated, and his situation was the exact same.
Goddamn it, he wasn't going to die here. He continued pushing as hard as he could. His monoblade cut into the much more massive monoblade pressing down on him.
The red borg stomped over, coming into his field of view and glaring down at him. It raised it's remaining arm, and he heard the auto-shotgun begin to rev inside it.
He reached for his thigh-holster with one arm…
The red borg stomped on it, claws pinning his left arm to the floor. He was truly pinned. A horrible, nostalgic terror welled up in him. He had never been here before! Why did this feel so familiar?!
"Like I said, intruder. You should've given up from the start." The annoying bitch spoke.
"Fuck you." He spat out, straining the whole while as hard as he could…
The autoshotgun increased in volume, he could hear it…
Both borgs stilled.
They froze completely. He continued to strain, now starting to make progress. Did they glitch out or some shit?
Their optics changed color, once red and blue, now silvery and sparkling.
Both borgs stepped back and lowered their weapons. A wonderful presence filled his head.
'Sorry it took me so long, Johnny.' A beautiful voice whispered in apology to him.
'Alt.' He whispered back, a relieved grin growing on his face. 'You got a handle on the steelheads then?'
'Bingo loverboy. Their ICE was pretty good, so I was a little slow. Glad I made it in time.'
'Heh, don't worry about it, got everything done that you needed to?'
'Yeah, I'm done down there now. Ready to go up?'
'All the way to the top.' He pushed himself up from the crater in the floor, looking at the two big fuckers that were about to flatline him. He glared at them, hoping that they could see it.
'They can.' Alt assured him. He nodded and started marching up again.
Hey, Saburo, you fucker, he was coming for ya. Better not pussy out here.