Replies to my Reviews
Luckenhaft: Wow... You just described my chapter in an Abridged version... Wow...
DaDragon562: We both know guts is the only thing she's lacking... Otherwise, if not for her building frustration from Shirou bringing home TWO foreign beauties, he wouldn't still be a virgin by then.
Ariadne Venegas: Sorry, no shroud for Shirou.
egads: Indeed.
Hainz Leonard Kim: Thanks
Chapter 07: Anything Goes in Roanapur II
Caren Hortensia hummed as she ran through the halls, meeting more and more corpses strewn around as she steadily made her way upwards.
She soon ran into the hallway, encountering Shirou and a pair of vampiric twins attacking him.
"Caren!" Shirou Emiya (a.k.a. Argonaut) called as soon as he saw her. "She's upstairs! Go!"
"Caren?" Gretel stopped shooting to acknowledge her. "You really came! It's great that Laeticia's really got such loyal friends! Get to the top floor, she's in the third room to your right."
"Go! I got this!" Shirou called out as he blocked and weaved through their attacks, occasionally shooting back. Caren took a moment to notice that all of his shots were all aimed for their heads, potentially aiming to grant quick deaths for the former children, before rushing upwards as instructed.
Busting into the right room, she was instantly attacked by a thrown book, which Caren had to dodge among other items until she called out.
"...Caren?" Caren opened her mouth only for Laeticia to crash into her stomach, shivering and sobbing from the gunshots downstairs.
At that moment, Caren was reminded that despite her knowledge of the {Moonlit World}, Laeticia was still very much a civilian. There was no way she could take her down the same way that she came, where she would witness one of her rescuers trying to gun down her protectors.
Caren cast a look at the windows. They were a fair bit high...
Verrocchio growled as he stepped off his car, glaring at the group of people who had gathered around his HQ to spectate at the battle.
"Look at that, Rock!" Verrocchio turned his head to see the Lagoon Company's Revy and Rock watching the building, with the woman cackling at the sight of bullets still flying out of a high floor in his building. "Someone's still fighting in there!"
"I heard it's been like that for some minutes now." Rock muttered. "Considering how quickly the attacker moved upwards, he must have been stopped by someone dangerous."
'The twins!' For the first time, Verrocchio smiled at his good fortune in hiring those little sick brats. 'I can just let those monsters deal with the attacker and get back to my-'
The Italian Boss's musing was cut off suddenly when two figures smashed through a higher window, with one screaming as they plummeted towards the ground, only for a few red shrouds to launch off the other figure's forearm and latch to the nearby buildings.
With that, their fall slowed down, allowing them to swing towards the group. Verrocchio nearly choked on his cigar when they smashed down on his car, denting it in and scaring out the driver.
"Why did you jump us out the building?!" Laeticia questioned before locking eyes with the mob boss. "Ah."
"Do you know him?" Caren questioned as she hopped down without a care and unfurled the shrouds keeping Laeticia safe.
"He's the one who kidnapped me."
In a millisecond, Verrocchio found himself choking as a shroud wrapped tightly around his neck.
"I see." Caren darkly muttered as Laeticia fretted at her side. "I'll kill you here and now."
"Caren!" Rock came close to them. "Is this the girl you and Shirou were looking for?"
"Yes. And this is the one who took her." Caren replied as a second shroud manifested and rolled into a large, pointy cone which started to spin similarly to a drill. "I'll make sure he can't ever again."
Before Rock could protest, a large explosion shook the air as three figures came flying out of the building, with two landing nearby while the third smashed into a filling station.
The sudden blast of heat and sound blew everyone's sight, thereby making sure that everyone witnessed the sight of Shirou Emiya (a.k.a. Argonaut) walk away from the burning wreck soon afterward.
Aflame but unburning.
"H-H-He's a real Terminator?!" Abrego, who had just arrived with the other Bosses, screamed out loud and ran off immediately with his men right behind him, causing a ripple of shock to spread across the watchers. Shirou noticed this and searched around until he found Caren.
"Caren! Is that Laeticia?!" Shirou's query drew attention to Caren, who was still in the middle of choking out Verrocchio and nearly had a drill at his eye.
"Yes!" Caren yelled back. "And this is her kidnapper!"
Verrocchio flinched as he saw the Terminator's glare settle on him before facing back to Caren. "Let's get her to somewhere safe before anything else."
What happened next was an utter shock to everyone. The Terminator took out a dagger and stabbed it to the ground before swiftly making his way over to Caren and Laeticia.
"I'll be back." Shirou glared right through Verrocchio as in a literal blink, they vanished into thin air.
"...oh well." Hansel twisted on one foot, turning a sadistic gaze on Verrocchio along with his sister. "Sora Mea, let's deal with our boss till he comes back."
"Yes, Fratele Meu." Gretel dropped the minigun, joining her brother in slowly stalking towards the Italian boss.
In a burst of panic, one of Verrocchio's mobsters shot Gretel several times, even emptying his clip until at least two bullets blasted through her face. Gretel took great pleasure catching one right in her teeth and shattering it for good measure.
Alucard would be proud if he were present there.
The shooter could not be blamed for pissing his pants in that moment.
They were monsters in the midst of mortals.
"W-W-Wait a minute!"
Rock, the only one to be unaffected by their Killing Intent either by immense willpower or sheer ignorance, got directly in the twins' path. "Y-You two are 'Dracula', right?"
"Rock! Will you shut the fuck up and get away from them?!" Revy called out, snapping out of her paralysis to aim her guns.
"Those two ain't aiming for negotiations, cutie!" Eda joined in aiming. "This ain't like the Church!"
"If they wanted me dead, I would be in an instant and nobody would be able to stop them!" Rock replied, relaxing a bit as the two regarding him with blatant interest. "What brought you guys here? Why have you been killing others so rampantly? Are you two real vampires?"
"He amuses me, Sora Mea." Hansel chuckled as several of their observers mumbled at that last question. "He feels almost as pure as Laeticia."
"Yes, he does." Gretel replied. "I wonder if he's a hostage like Laeticia, but abandoned rather than saved. A person who doesn't belong here. If I had to make a comparison, he feels like a clean towel that refuses to get dirty even when stomped upon constantly."
Rock winced at their description.
"Oh, I forgot." With a swish of his coat, Hansel bowed extravagantly. "My name is Hansel and she is Gretel. We'd tell you our real names but we've honestly forgotten them."
As Gretel and her brother started to slowly circle Rock who winced from that description which had hit a bit close to home, Revy's Beretta 92F's triggers slowly cocked back-
"Cool it, Two Hands." Eda warned as she slightly lowered her gun. "Believe it or not, Rock's currently the only reason that these two haven't gone on a fresh killing spree after Shirou left. If anything happens, he will be their first victim."
"Fuck!" Revy lowered her guns, along with a bunch of Hotel Moscow soldiers who had just arrived with Balalaika.
Not only was Rock a pleasant person to know for the former soldiers, his predominantly peaceful and humane nature, as clearly shown in front of them as he had just saved a scumbag like Verrocchio, was an always welcome aversion to the shithole that was Roanapur.
Gretel smirked towards Revy's direction, proving Eda's point right as she proceeded to answer Rock's questions. "To answer your first question, we... were hired to come here and kill Balalaika by one of Roanapur's residents~!"
The adults around them did a classic double take, but none more than Rock, who retorted faster than his brain could catch up.
"Come again?!" Rock asked as Balalaika's eyes widened in shock. "I'm very new to this city but even I know that's stupid! Who's the moron who did that?!"
Verrocchio choked on his spit when the Vampire Twins remorselessly pointed at him. In an instant, his knee was shot out.
"Sergeant." Balalaika didn't say anymore as Boris put his gun back and two of their soldiers dragged the screaming Verrocchio to one of their trucks.
"I'll leave him alive for interrogation." Boris kicked the screaming man unconscious as he was loaded up.
"But you're just children!" Rock's yell drew back attention. "Y-You can't be hired killers! You're too young!"
"That's true." Hansel admitted. "But we've also been doing contract hits in Europe for two years."
"Such as…" Rock reluctantly prodded.
"Have you heard of Campini, the mobster in Naples?" Gretel waited until he nodded in the affirmative. "We killed him."
A shift of gravel got their attention as a positively stunned Balalaika approached. "If you killed Campini, then you were the ones who killed…"
"A prosecutor who was investigating Camorra activities a couple of days later," Hansel supplied. "However, our first job was a hit on an Albanian mob boss in Tirana."
"...but you're children." Rock emphasized as he gestured to their frankly frail looking bodies. "What kind of lives did you live to get like this-"
"And that brings you to your second question." Gretel hummed. "I guess we can say that our real troubles came from our experience in Sicily, as we became acquainted in blood and darkness."
"We were usually kicked so hard that some nights, we couldn't stop peeing red blood." Hansel continued. "Of course, we weren't the only ones. I remember up to 16 of us sharing the same room."
"Of course as time passed, the number steadily decreased and increased." Gretel spoke. "We were trained to fight against each other. Those who won lived to fight another day. Those who lost but were unfortunate to live, were used to relieve stress, regardless of gender. Of course, that still happened whenever the adults felt like it. Losing was just a guarantee."
Rock looked very sick as they went on. In the background, he could hear several of the others around him already puking their guts out. They were all hardened criminals but even they had a threshold which they never let themselves cross.
"I remember cutting down my roommates and other children with weapons." Hansel kept talking as he emphasized his axe. "Bludgeoning them with my fists. Wringing their necks. All the while surrounded by the cheers of adults under a hideously grey sky."
"'Why does God make us suffer so much?' Fratele Meu and I always asked that question to everyone who would listen." Gretel spoke. "The adults who would answer our questions either replied in more beatings, relieving of stress or this single answer from one of our roommates before I killed her; 'If I had to give a reason, I'd say it's because it's our fate.'."
'How can humans do that and not an eye?' Rock slowly fell to his knees in despair. 'How...?'
"Then we met Him." Hansel's voice rose to a fervor. "Our Savior! He congratulated us for surviving that far and gave us an answer. 'Why do you think there's something like God in this World? Belief? How did you learn that belief that you speak of? The entire of this World is governed by the reasoning of dirty-minded adults. What one believes in is something that is influenced by the lives you've lived and the ones who raised you, not actual facts, such as the bonafide proof that 'God' exists. If you want gods to exist and you feel that they aren't there, you might as well become one! Come with me and I'll get you to the starting point. To transcend humanity, you'll have to ditch that behind!'"
Balalaika, Chang and Eda narrowed their eyes at that particular speech.
"Every nook and cranny of our bodies were toyed with and modified." Gretel hugged herself in reminiscence. "Everyday was painful. Nothing but pain. The Man kept doing painful things our bodies. In the morning, afternoon and night... everyday... Then, we died."
"And then... we lived." Hansel continued. "Our scars and wounds healed over, our muscles didn't outwardly change but I clenched a pipe and squeezed it thinner than a straw and after the Man let us out into the Night, He told us this words; 'You are now Free and Powerful. Go do whatever you want.'"
"And we did." Gretel spoke. "We went home and ate everyone. Some fell to their knees in worship. Some hid behind walls and guns. But the thing they did best... was beg for mercy. It was so pitiful."
"...wait." Rock mumbled, slowly getting to his feet. "When you say 'everyone', did you...?"
Hansel smiled brightly. "None of our fellow victims resisted or tried to run away. So we. Ate. Everybody."
"You killed them?!" Rock staggered. "Even the ones who suffered alongside you?!"
"What are you talking about?" Gretel tilted her head. "They are forever with us."
"You hold them in spirit, huh...?" Rock mumbled. "What a crazy coping mechanism..."
"No, they are are forever with us." Gretel raised her hand and bit into it severely.
As a ludicrous amount of blood splashed down, Rock scrambled away from the splash zone. In the utter silence, everyone heard the gurgling as a pale arm shot out of the puddle, before slowly pulling itself and the rest of it's body out.
Soon, what was revealed was a ghoul. He looked about the twins' age but was extremely bloody and had no missing body parts. The scariest part was the intelligence in the eyes that looked down on the fallen Rock.
He gave a mocking wave before slowly falling backwards into the bloody pool he emerged from. Balalaika blinked, took her still burning cigarette from her lips before dropping into the puddle.
When the telltale sound of sizzling proved that her burning cigarette had indeed made contact with very real liquid mass, she abruptly turned about. "Sergeant, take me to the nearest bar."
"Understood, Kapitan." Boris took out a phone. "Are you aiming for 'buzzed' or 'black-out'?"
"'Black-out', Sergeant."
"Well, that explains a lot of things..."
Balalaika turned swiftly and shot at her side. Shirou, who had returned but remained undetected to listen to their story, easily caught her bullet in his palm, carelessly tossing the deformed bullet away before making his way to the twins.
"I was already reluctant to kill you two when we started our fight, but now, even less so..." Shirou groaned. When he looked up again, he searched the area. "Where's Verrocchio?"
"Soon to be dealt with." Balalaika replied. Even though the one next to her was a young man, her war-trained instincts screamed at her not to provoke him. There was an ever present feeling of flames tickling her neck and if she wasn't feeling a bit nauseous from Gretel's trick, she might have felt phantom burning all over her scars.
In the brief second that Shirou locked eyes with Balalaika, the ex-soldier felt primal terror at the instinctual knowledge that she was probably about to die for the first time in years.
"Great. If he ends up dead, that'll be ideal." Shirou replied before facing the twins. "So, what will you do now? And why do I sense that you two still have the desire to kill?"
Gretel chuckled before outright laughing. "Why? You're asking why? That's funny. Because we want to. There's no other reason. We want to, so we do it. We won't attack any innocents like... Mr Rock here or Miss Laeticia, but Roanapur's full of killers. No one will care if everyone disappears in a bloody scene."
Hansel grinned before punching forward. A thunderclap of pure force resonated through the air as Shirou caught Hansel's punch. The resultant shockwave nearly blew everyone away, with Rock nearly being flung if not for Gretel's sudden and tight grip on his belt.
"...Shirou, I believe?" Hansel chuckled. "You... are not like us, right?"
"...no." Shirou replied. "I'm something else. Something else beyond humans."
He turned to look to the other observers. "Anyone who isn't connected to Okajima here or..." He quickly turned to Balalaika and asked for a name. "Balalaika, get out of here!"
"Hah?" One of the mobsters yelled out as he stepped out with a raised AK-47. "What are you gonna do if we don't feel like it?"
Shirou glared and Rock gawked as twin beams of scarlet light blasted out of his eyes, easily melting through the mobster's gun like butter and cutting a glowing line across the building behind him.
There was utter silence as every tried to comprehend what they had just seen.
'That's new. I just wanted to make my eyes glow a bit...' "Is there anyone here who feels tough enough to take that on?"
Rock blinked as the area swiftly cleared out, leaving just the members of Hotel Moscow, Lagoon Company and Eda, who was surprisingly looking at Shirou with a look similar to what a fan might give their idol.
Then again, he'd just displayed himself as a Superman expy and even Rock considered himself a fan of that character.
"...errr... Why do you need to kill others, exactly?" Rock carefully queried the twins. "No matter the reason, you can't just simply kill people."
"Because the World keeps existing in order to kill." Hansel answered. "The scent of gun smoke, the screams of prey, warmth of blood, we love it all, now."
"No!" Rock burst into tears and pulled the twins into a hug. Due to the shock of genuine care of their sakes (they were very able to tell apart fake emotions to real ones.), Hansel and Gretel couldn't even resist his grasp in the slightest. "Blood and darkness are just a small part of this world! There's lots more for you two to experience!"
"I see now." Shirou's observation rung out through the group. "These two aren't really malevolent by choice. They just want to be loved."
"Loved?!" Revy was very skeptical. "With what I've fucking seen so far?!"
"Yes, Two Hands." Shirou replied. "The thing is these two have never received any love for as long as they can remember. That's why a man who experimented on them painfully and gave them their abilities is called a savior of all things by them."
'Now that I think about it clearly, that must be why Laeticia was actually safe around them. If she was as kind as Caren described, the twins would have done their best to preserve that rare kindness for as much as they could.' Shirou pointed at the bloody puddle. "The fact that they can retain whoever they like into themselves is even a twisted manifestation of their desires. After all, loved ones are supposed to be 'forever with them', aren't they?"
"...if that's true, then what do we do?" Gretel asked, speaking in a trembling tone for the first time. "What do we do to obtain Love? Do we just 'eat' everybody? 'Devour' everybody till we're filled?"
As Gretel spoke, a bloody miasma spread forth from her, slowly cloaking her visage as if fully giving in to her Dead Apostle instinct to 'Devour'.
'This is bad. We've reached a point where it all depends on the right answer!' Shirou worried. 'The answer to that question is the turning point which will determine the twins' paths.'
Rock silently squatted down and placed his palm on the little girl's cheek. "No, that's wrong."
"...huh?" Gretel and her brother weren't the only ones stunned. Everyone in the vicinity stared at the utter calmness in which Rock delivered his answer to the girl's question.
"Trying to fill yourselves up because you want to be loved... I think that's wrong." Rock gently spoke as his thumb gently ran across her cheek while moving his other hand to ruffle Hansel's hair. "Even if you stuff yourselves like that, it definitely won't be Love. If anything, Love is something that has always had to be worked for, due to how fun and enjoyable it is."
Balalaika sighed deeply as she listened to the Japanese ex-Salaryman explain about Love to the Romanian pair of abused vampire children. 'Well, it's not like there's anyone else who would do a better job at it in this rotten city.'
"I... I don't understand." Hansel contemplated as he subconsciously leaned into Rock's hand. "Fun and enjoyable? Isn't that Love?"
"It's probably the opposite." Rock explained. "I think that Love isn't something obtained, but is rather something nurtured when one thinks of someone else. After all, can you not say you two love each other? That Love is clearly not the same you'd give to... the guy you called out."
Hansel and Gretel looked upon Rock in blatant wonder. Shirou and Eda nodded in approval while Revy had an indescribable look on her face.
"WRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!"
Verrocchio slowly came to, instantly becoming aware of his throbbing pain on his face and legs. He was tied up in one of {Hotel Moscow}'s trucks and was instantly reminded of how he ended up like that.
'Those damn brats! They should have just taken care of that Ivan bitch, but noooo they delayed and played around with that French bitch I picked up! Not only did she have a powerful friend who got half my men by himself, now that Ivan bitch's got me by the balls!'
Verrocchio slowly fumbled with his jacket, until a small transparent pill filled with reddish black blood fell out his inner breast pocket. Mindful of the soldiers in the truck with him, he took advantage of their ignorance as they paid attention to whatever was happening outside and used his mouth to suck it in.
'I knew that taking those twins' blood was a good idea! Who cares if they kept giggling while I took them?! Maurry's warnings don't mean shit! I may not read those vampire novels as much as he did, but even I know that a chance of getting the powers of Dracula is totally worth the risk and crazy!'
Verrocchio bit down, causing the blood to touch his mouth wounds. The sheer pain that followed almost made him reconsider his choice.
The nearby soldiers jerked to action as Verrocchio trashed and foamed blood in his mouth. The soldiers gasped as Verrocchio's body writhed and warped in unimaginable ways, with his limbs rearranging and his head distorting into a bestial form.
Then they screamed as well when they were pierced through by bloody tusks.
"Kapitan!" Balalaika dodged away to Boris's side as Salahov's and Menishof's screams joined the wailing from the truck, which in turn shook heavily.
"Rock! Take {Kienai Shinkou}!"
Rock turned and nearly got beaned with a sheathed katana that was thrown at him. He unsheathed it to reveal a beautiful black blade which shimmered gold whenever it caught the light. "'Inextinguishable Faith'?"
"It's made to deal with vampires." Shirou explained as he manifested {Kanshou & Bakuya}. "Plus, you're a former swordsman. 8 years aren't enough to completely rust your skills."
Rock gulped and took a stance as the top of the truck ruptured, revealing a jumping figure who immediately flattened the truck on impact.
"HAHAHAHAHA!" The laughter came from a warthog humanoid with glowing crimson eyes and a wild golden mane that instantly clued others on his true identity. As well as his next words. "You dared to mock me! I'll devour you bra-!"
Shirou blitzed past Verrocchio's side, causing him to choke as his right arm was sliced neatly down his shoulder. 'My arm's... been sliced off...?'
"RRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHH!"
Verrocchio screamed in pain as reddish black blood gushed out of the severed joint. In his pain throes, he glared around for a target.
The twins blinked idly in delayed shock as they were suddenly pushed out of the way, only being able to watch helplessly as Verrocchio crashed into Rock and sunk his overly large teeth into his shoulder.
Amongst all the ones struck still by this, Revy was the first to scream.
"ROOOOOOOOOOOCCK!"
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