Chapter 46 : Tempus Fugit - One Winged Angel
It started without a prologue, without a warning, without any signs showing that something was about to happen.
One instant, the partygoers of the 'Nighthaunt Club' were busy drinking and dancing under stroboscopic lighting and blaring EDM music, attended by bored barmaids and distractedly vigilant bouncers.
The next, as if a switch had been flipped, everyone in attendance froze, breaths hitching in concert, as they all got the very distinct impression of finding themselves face-to-face with an unknown, ancient, primal and angry predator, baring its teeth right in their faces, clawed hands grasping at their oh so breakable necks.
For a beat, near-perfect immobility reigned supreme on the dancefloor of the 'Nighthaunt Club', right until the spell suddenly broke.
As the illusion, this feeling, got lifted, the partygoers and various personnel reacted in two different, yet rather distinct, fashions. Either they fell on their asses, hyperventilating and sweating like crazy, or they instantly bolted for the doors, all thoughts besides self-preservation discarded and forgotten, not paying one lick of mind toward their companions of misfortune as they trampled to get as far as possible, as quickly as possible, from the dangerous being prowling in their midst.
Needless to say, there was nothing even remotely organized about that particular brand of chaos, as bouncers found themselves elbowing partygoers for a chance to be the first outside of this trap.
It also meant that the sounds of the chaos above rather handily hid the massacre that was about to happen below ground.
The offending baselines, the traffickers, were still scrambling to get a proper hold of the situation and what the hell was happening as I did not quite jump, but almost flew down the stairs, using the caved in metallic door as a makeshift snowboard to slide the last few steps, the sound of groaning metal scratching against the concrete signaling my arrival to the crowd gathered below.
It, also, gave me the necessary time to pay a good gander at my surroundings, and those weren't as cliché as I would have thought at first.
The vicinity was rather gaudily decorated, true, but more in line with what you'd expect in a classy bordello than the mental image I pictured for myself, the guy I mind-drained -Jotaro- apparently so used to the decor that he hadn't been paying it proper attention.
The floor was covered with a uniform, white carpet, plump loveseats arrayed this way and that under dim lighting, a few, relatively private, booths situated next to the walls, as well as a handful of doors hidden behind sheer curtains leading deeper into the place.
There were, also, a dozen individuals gathered here, most of them male bar a sole female, all trying their hardest, and failing, not to gape at my arrival, a few of them caught in a half-rising motion, one lucky individual already scrambling for a concealed weapon.
Grasping the situation in less than a heartbeat, I crouch over my still sliding perch, feeling my muscles coil under me, before jumping over the railing, barreling right into their midst-
-landing in front of Lucky Guy, my right arm snapping from right-to-left in a horizontal cut, meat, organ and bone giving way with the same disturbing ease as it did earlier, arcs of eldritch blue lights trailing the motion of my Force Sword.
Lucky guy drops as my eyes roam around, lightning quick, their motion hidden by my goggles, two successive meaty thumps announcing the death of my most recent victim.
Where previously, the crowd looked at me with bewilderment, they now stare with fear and incomprehension, their complexion ashen as they scramble to put as much distance as they can between them an me, and I idly notice that the female -the Madam- is actually in the lead.
I crouch lightly once more, ignoring the micro fractures and muscle tearing the explosive speed my channeled Haste makes my body go through, and jump into the fray, still cognizant despite the Rage, now helpfully channeled at last, but still frothing at the mouth at the situation.
A good thing none of them is going to escape, then.
Trying his hardest to calm his frantically beating heart, his brows furrowed, he walk with haste in the direction of the mainroom, fully intent on understanding what just happened.
He knew fear, of course he did, but he had never felt something so raw, so primal, so aggressive in his life, which almost made him call in a deal once the effect had abated, but he had stayed his hands, a life led in the shadows having taught him that haste makes waste most of the time and that some decisions needed to be made only once you knew everything about a given situation.
He finally reaches the door, a few handful of seconds later.
"What the fuck…" He instantly bellows as he wrenches both the door and the curtain open-
-only for his words to get caught in his throat as he witnesses the spectacle, no, the massacre still happening in front of him.
On the white carpet adorning the floor, his employees lay, either cut in twain or gored through, like a madened beast would do, splatters of blood and offal haphazardly having landed absolutely everywhere, his last three guys and the one he trusted with the day-to-day operations running for their life-
-and, hot on their trail, a one winged specter of death is giving them chase, its last victim still on their way to fall on the floor.
Clad in strange heraldry, adorned with a metal and clothes of odd makes, motifs of skulls and blocky letters, the specter looks every part the avatar of gothic death.
He can only watch as, in the span of a second, the specter seems to blur, its shimmering blue sword skewering one of his men, before discarding his corpse aside like an afterthought, its wing coiling on itself to better lash out on another in the same motion, punching right through his rib cage in a carmine shower, bone fragments getting blasted everywhere in front of it, the impacts making his remaining personnel yelp in fright as they keep trying, without any luck, to put some distance between the specter and them.
His throat uncomfortably dry, he goes to re-lock the door in a spur of the moment decision, no doubt heavily inspired by long-forgotten survival instincts-
-but not before locking eyes with the specter.
Strange, thick black round goggles, from which two purplish-blue points of lights shine, eldritch magenta arcs of lightning trailing their contour and its head's every motion, set deep under a red limed black cowl.
For an instant, not even a second, he stares deep into the light shining from within those two abyssal pits-
-before about-facing, shutting the door behind him with all his might, ignoring the cries of dismay and betrayal of his subordinates as he legs it with all his might toward his private office, the sounds of the carnage unheard once again as the soundproofing does its job.
Alas, he barely has the time to reach his sanctum as the door buckles, then cave in under the eldritch might of his assailant, the metallic groan of the door-frame giving in prompting him to look over his shoulder in frantic fright as he crosses his office's threshold, only to see the assailant, the specter, give chase, its wing scraping against the wall, gouging it with a disturbing nails-on-a-chalkboard sound, as it closes the distance between the two of them way to fucking fast.
Barreling inside his office, making a split second decision, he jumps over the desk, landing in a heap, scrambling to open one of his drawer frantically, succeeding, slipping one of his hands inside of it-
-only to be sent unceremoniously flying, crashing into the shelves adorning the wall, books and collectibles falling on him in the motion.
Bleary eyed, possibly concussed, it takes him a few seconds before the stars in his eyes give way to the specter's figure as it stalks in his direction, its cyan blue wing dripping blood and ichor behind it, yet its attire oddly pristine, as if it took express precaution to avoid getting sullied by mortal blood.
Feeling the slip of paper still clutched in his grip, he starts to chuckle, only to gurgle instead, prompting him to frown in puzzlement.
His eyes trail downward, and his spirits fall as he finally notices the huge gouge his assailant has taken from his left side.
No two ways around it, he is dying.
Luckily, if he can-
He howls in agony as unwhite flames suddenly jump from his assailant's outstretched hand, setting both his right hand and the slip of paper hidden within alight.
The flames, never ending, all consuming, hungry, reduce the paper, then his hand to naught but ashes in the span of a heartbeat, setting his nerves ablaze, then killing them.
Panting under the pain and exertion of his previous efforts both, it is all he can but to weakly raise his head, defeated, to gaze at the specter.
Slowly, with measured motions, completely at odds with its previously jittery display, the specter bends over.
"No." It denies, as if passing a judgment, its voice oddly feminine, albeit heavily muffled by the cloth mask it wears, a second before the shimmering blade takes his head, and he knows no more.
I rise from my bent over position, my mask hiding a sneer of distaste as the Boss' head lands wetly next to his crumpled body.
The fucker had a supernatural backer.
More precisely, the fucker had a devil backer, if his scrambling for a piece of paper had been anything to go by, because I am fairly certain that I just burnt a summoning contract.
I could be wrong, and I could neither confirm nor deny my hypothesis, since I burnt it to ashes, but it still painted a worrying picture.
Because either the two heiresses were in on it after some fashion, be it willful ignorance or something more sinister and evil, or someone was playing mind-games with them, and I just kicked the anthill.
Shaking my head ruefully, the Hate still not fully abated, and with decidedly very little time in front of me before someone came knocking, I about face and start making my way…
…Toward the 'processing chamber'.
Yuki couldn't help but scramble against the wall as the sound of the door opening reached her ears, her heart already beating wildly, her swollen lower lip and aching groin painfully reminding her of their existence, already dreading what was going to happen next, in this awful, evil place.
Making herself as quiet and as little as possible, not moving one inch, she listens, carefully, to the sound of footsteps closing by, wondering if this time, if she feigned to be asleep, she'd be spared the horrors of her new lot in life.
Sadly, she hasn't the time to reach a proper conclusion as the tip of a boot steps into her field of view-
-and finds herself gaping as she takes in the features of the figure who just stepped inside the pens.
Clad in black with red accents, strange heraldry etched on an odd armor, with skulls aplenty, the dim lights of the surroundings forbidding her from seeing them clearly, the stranger doesn't even look her way as they step ever deeper, always deeper amid the pen.
Yuki only notices the odd, crystalline, wing construct when it lashes out at her cage's door, prompting her to yelp in fright.
Then one tinkling, metallic sound, followed by a flurry of others, calls her back to reality, and she can only stare as the bars of her prison fall to the ground.
Not quite believing that this just happened, she remains silent for a while, making herself as little, as unremarkable as possible, as similar sounds keep echoing from deeper inside the pens.
Time stretches by, silence reigning once more, and Yuki finally gathers enough courage to cautiously crawl toward the carved out opening, risking a look in the direction of the stranger-
-only to see them coming back, empty handed besides a blade of strange make.
Yuki freezes as the stranger walks close by, before finally stopping a handful of meters from her.
"You're free. All of you are." They, no, she, simply says to her, before resuming her walk.
Admittedly, it takes her a long time staring at the armored-, no, the one winged angel's back, before Yuki fully takes in the full significance of her words.
It's only as the stranger vanishes through the door that it finally hits her, and she starts sobbing in relief.
[AN: Welp, that happened, I guess?
Next chapter(s) will be the direct aftermath, and afterwards we will got the Christmass special I had in my head that I wasn't able to write in time.
Hope you enjoy, xoxo]