Hey guys, Tehpootisman here, with a bonus chapter.
This fanfic is not dead just yet, rather, I just needed a bit of a break after burning out, and decided to start another fanfic, this time a Shield Hero/Calamity crossover, called Sinner in Night's Shadow. Go check it out!
Anyways, this bonus chapter takes place during Chapter 7, as it was cut out of the final version. Because of this, it's still canon.
Though, some parts may contain continuity errors. Oh well.
'I am curious.'
The Infected stood in an alleyway, watching as a random street thug stood in front of a warehouse, lighting a cigarette.
As all cities do, no matter the size, they always have a shadier part that nobody really likes going to.
It was quite well known that Kuoh was a safe place, but a few small-time gangs always ran around causing mischief.
What the Infected found, however, was an upstart gang planning to use the Gremory Territory to manufacture some drugs to ship out of town.
Not that it really knew any of that.
It walked out from its hiding place, approaching the thug.
"Oi, kid! Skedaddle! There's nothing to be seen here."
"Kuuuu."
The mobster-wannabe only got a blank stare in response.
"Are you retarded? Scram! Shoo! Let a man smoke in peace!"
Stare.
"Fuck off or I'll stab the shit out of you!"
The infected didn't really care, solely focused on the lit cigarette in the man's mouth.
"Don't say I didn't warn ya!"
The man pulled a knife and drove it deep into the Infected's gut.
Huge mistake.
The Infected grimaced in pain for a moment, looking down at the wound. It looked back up and grabbed the now-terrified man by the throat, the Spawn's face contorting into one of primal anger.
"Kuuuuu…!"
The thug was promptly thrown out of the alleyway, creating a somewhat comically oversized dust cloud when he hit the wall of another building.
'Pain is unfavorable. Annoying.'
With that out of the way, the Infected looked down to see a carton of cigarettes the man had dropped.
Curious, it picked them up.
"Kuuu." It poured the tobacco sticks into its open hand, staring at them intently.
Then it promptly tried to imitate the man, by shoving them all into its mouth. Its eyes looked down at the mishmash of cancer blunts, confused.
'No glow?'
It wondered why the ends weren't glowing at all. It shrugged, taking a big deep gulp.
The Infected's gut gurgled before it keeled over, puking up a load of tar.
'Taste awful! Do not eat!'
One of the side effects of cigarettes, besides lung cancer, is that it can fill your lungs with tar, which greatly cripples their ability to filter air.
Normally, one would need to smoke cigarettes for a rather long time to accrue the amount that the Astral clone had just barfed up. However, with the Astral Infection's ability to assimilate just about any material, its internal organs simply just produced an excessive amount before realizing how detrimental it was.
Once its insides had been thoroughly purged of the foreign substance, it looked up at its surroundings.
The door where the man had been standing was cracked open.
Curiosity got the best of the Astral-spawn.
"Well, talk about a quick smoke brea— Oi! You're not Terry!"
Inside, the Spawn found several thugs who were (mostly) hard at work trying to make an honest living by making some illegal drugs. Specifically, meth.
"You can't be here, pal!"
The gangsters pulled out switchblades, approaching the intruder in a menacing fashion.
'Hostile intent! Defend.'
This, of course, set it off into a violent rampage.
Were it not for the number of various supernatural healing tonics that were present in Nyke's box, it would've probably died out back in that church.
Now, however, the spawn had the means to survive in just about any situation. Instincts planted within its mind told it to fight, and unknown knowledge told it how to do so.
'Surrounded. Attack in all directions!'
The Spawn's body bulged and squirmed as two arms morphed into an eldritch mass of unsettlingly long limbs.
"KuuuUUUUURARARARARARARARARAAAAAAAA!"
They lashed out, flinging, punching, and slapping all the poor blokes within its unholy range.
A few were sent flying through the wooden walls, however most of them were simply smashed through the wooden walls of the warehouse, smashing into highly flammable meth-making equipment on the way out.
With a sickening schlorp, the Spawn reverted back into its original form as a bootlegged bone-plated clone of Kuraima, just as the production facilities exploded, setting the warehouse ablaze.
Meanwhile at the cafe…
"...so then, I told her, "One sees you later, and the other in a while!"
The group of four laughed as Nyke finished up his story.
"So anyway, that's when I realized that my passport was stolen and now I was stuck in Japan."
The laughter came to an awkward halt at that.
At that time, the sound of a fire truck off in the distance could be heard.
"Huh? Fire squad's on the move."
Kuraima shrugged. "In the few years that I've been here, I've never seen them get mobilized."
Issei shrugged as well. "I've only seen them send out the fire trucks only twice as far as I remember. Second time was when my dad tried cooking without mom's help."
"Woah, okay, now this, I gotta hear."
The Spawn looked around, watching idly as the chemical flames danced around it.
"What the fuck did you do!?" Some young-looking man with an odd shade of blue hair screamed, approaching the Infected. "I left for five fucking minutes to get a sandwich from the sandwich store and the whole place has blown its top! This was supposed to be a secret operation!"
"Ku."
"Bah! Who cares! The boss is gonna be so fucking mad!"
…
…
…
"Unless...I know! I'll bring 'em your head! Yes! That'll solve everything!"
A pair of massive crab claws emerged as strands of fungus wove into shape behind the man's back.
"Behold! I am Cru Stai-on! Wielder of the Sacred Gear known as [Perfect Infestation]! Now, prepare yourself for the beatdown of a lifetime!"
Cru charged forward, his oversized claws moving in to snap the Spawn in twain.
The Infected jumped back, channeling biomatter into its arms to enlarge them threefold and threw them forward.
Cronch!
The Spawns arms were both cut off at the elbow, fingers grasping at nothing as they lay within the claws' grasps.
"What the hell was that?! Hahaha, you're so fucking retarded! What are you gonna—"
Squelch.
With slithery slurps and the sounds of bones cracking, Cru watched in horror as the Spawn's amputated limbs simply just regrew.
"W-What the fuck?! What the fuck are you…?!"
Cru tried to open his claws but found them squeezed shut. "W-What the hell?!"
He found out why rather quickly; they were lathered up in tobacco tar. The arms he had cut off had been filled with absurd amounts of the vile paste and had spewed it all out onto his claws, sealing them shut.
"N...No way…"
He then realized that he'd been played like a damn violin. The Spawn had thrown its arms forward on purpose, with the intent of losing them.
"Kuuuuuuuuuuuuuu…"
"Shit, shit, shit, shit! Fine! Fine! You can go! I promise I'll let you go!"
"Ku."
The Spawn lashed out with an oversized fist, punching the Crab-man in the gut with extreme force, launching him into the sky.
He would later be found unconscious on the other side of town.
Sometime later, a group of individuals met up that evening as the sun was setting. Two men, two women.
"Can you believe this?" One of them, a woman dressed in all purple asked. Purple trench coat, purple pants, even purple hair. All varying shades of it.
One of the men, wearing equal amounts of purple, shrugged in response. "I mean, It really fuckin' happened. So I don't think we really have much of a choice but to believe it."
"I do not see a timely way to recuperate our losses." The other man, decked out in red, asked. "Once the Devils catch wind of us Sacred Gear wielders, it is only a matter of time before they come after us."
"We can't recover from a blow like that." Said the woman in, you guessed it, red. "We just cut our losses and take our punishments."
"Perhaps so, but...my nap time…"
This devolved into bickering and arguing until the woman in red raised her hand.
"That may be the case, but there's nothing saying we can't teach person responsible a valuable lesson in why you don't fuck with us before we bail."
"Oooh, I like that idea. All in favor of gang violence, say aye."
"Aye."
"Aye."
"Aye."
"So a unanimous vote. Alright, so when do we move out?"
"Track him down, and when the time's right, use one of those barrier things that ward people away to set up the ambush."
"Aight, gotcha."
"We're gonna show this punk why they shouldn't mess with us! As the Sinners of Eden, we'll beat their ass!"