Creation began on 05-12-19
Creation ended on 11-22-19
Neon Genesis Evangelion
A New Cause: Hellfire Wrath
Mana awoke to a foul smell that got caught in her nose, disturbing her peaceful slumber.
"Ugh," she groaned as she sat up in her bed, seeing a grayish smoke that was filling up her room. "Huh?! Fire?!"
She immediately jumped out of bed and opened her window, but froze at the sight in front of herself. It looked as though much of the neighborhood around her home was enveloped in this smoke, with people opening their windows, but not a single sign of fire.
"What's going on here?" Mana wondered.
Knock-knock. A knock at her door came.
"Mana? Are you awake?" It was her mother.
"Yes, Mom," she answered, and the door opened. "What's going on?"
"I don't know, Mana. Your father and I woke up…and there was this smoke everywhere. Nothing's on fire, but it's got people worried."
Cough, cough. Mana coughed as she covered her mouth; the smoke was so bad that it was affecting her lungs.
"Come on," her mother reached out to her. "We have a fan on downstairs, and it's helping a little bit with the smoke."
-x-
Looking down at the streets below from atop a skyscraper, Death, checking off what remained of Sendai, confirmed what Conquest and War had suspected when they met up with him three hours ago when this smoke started appearing; it wasn't covering specific locations in Japan. It was covering the whole of Japan, down to the last patch of recovered land that wasn't underwater. But it puzzled him as to how this smoke could envelop an entire country in less than four hours.
"Looks like we'll be busy today," he heard Mako say to him, manifesting beside him on his right on the rooftop.
"Yeah," Death agreed with him. "This smoke…or fog or whatever the Hell it is that's covering the nation, it's going to stir up some foul behavior from people."
"So you're gonna be busier than the other horsemen."
"Only if they cross the unforgiving line and inflict merciless pain onto others."
"IIIIIIIIIIIIIEEE!" They heard a shriek or screech from afar, catching their attention as they looked up at the smoke-filled sky.
"DEATH OF THE RESTORATIVE!" A loud, demonic voice bellowed, and Death looked back down at the streets below, seeing the demonic Horsemen of Pestilence, emanating a greenish glow from his body.
Death jumped down to the streets and stood three feet away from Pestilence.
"Do I have your attention, Pale Rider?" Pestilence questioned.
"What the Hell are you doing here?" Death questioned.
"Releasing the soldiers of the underworld, what else? First the smoke of the brimstone comes…and then the fires to unleash the vengeance of Hell itself onto the world!"
"If this were brimstone enveloping the nation, wouldn't it smell like sulfur? I've been to Hell several times, but the smell of brimstone always tends to smell like someone burnt something foul, like a carcass."
"Now, why would the brimstone I unleashed to spread across this pathetic little cluster of land masses need to smell like that? If I unleashed the poisonous effects, I'd be killing the mortals here when their souls have more value while they're still alive. Fear is good for business in Hell. The more people are afraid of what awaits them at the end of their lives, the more ripe their souls become. It's time for Hell…to be unleashed upon Earth!"
BOOM! A wall of fire formed down the street.
"I present to you…the beginning…of mankind's downfall."
Death watched as something emerged from the wall of fire. It was something he hadn't anticipated on seeing at all: A giant humanoid with burnt flesh and small horns on its head, and eyes that flared with dark fire. If anything, the giant had to be fifteen meters in height, muscular and full of malice towards human life and innocence.
"The Legion of the Damned," Pestilence introduced, and from the wall of fire came several more of these brimstone giants, some larger or smaller than fifteen meters. "As it was spoken long ago, my name is Legion, for we are many."
Legion was right, for these demonic behemoths were a horde of evil. Death was seeing their numbers increase with each member that emerged from the fire. He wasn't even sure that his firearms would injure any of these beings; Hell, a place different from Earth, had different limitations and lesser vulnerabilities that humans couldn't exploit.
Conquest, Death called out to his fellow horsemen out and about in the country, War, it's Pestilence, and he's unleashed the giants of Hell. I'm in the ruins of Sendai.
Conquest in Fukuoka, responded the Poison Master, and I'm seeing the same behemoths here, too. If he's unleashing them where you are, he's unleashing them everywhere across the archipelago. This was not how I wanted to spend the day after Thanksgiving.
War in Namegata, they heard the Violent One, and I'm about to engage on a combat high. We might need all four of us to deal with these giant A-holes.
Death sighed in a subtle agreement on what War suggested; just one of them would be within the realms of difficult to take down, but it would take all four of them to take out all their adversaries. No force unleashed on Earth could stand up to the full might of the Four Horsemen.
Mako transitioned into his horseman guise and brandished his halberd.
"You might be hoping for the might of the Four Horsemen of the Restorative," he uttered, "but it's no longer just the four of you. I'm a horseman, too. It'll take the five of us to beat these demons. You can't deny that."
"You're absolutely right," his brother agreed with him. "I'll take the big one."
Mako got the impression that Death was being funny; since each of these giants were massive, he could've referred to any one of them.
"Dismember the horsemen," Pestilence ordered, "kill the humans!"
-x-
"Famine," the Black Rider of the Restorative heard Mother Gaia address him as he was assisting the people whose turn it was to help maintain the horses by leveling their hooves, and he looked up from where he sat while a woman was leveling the hoof of a white horse they were tending to.
"Yes, Mother Gaia," he responded.
"One of the Apocalyptic Horsemen have triggered a releasing of Hell in Japan where your fellow horsemen currently are," she explained to him, "releasing hordes of demon giants. You're needed to help send back to Hell."
"But," he questioned upon realizing what that meant if he left, "wouldn't that mean all four of the riders from the Restorative would be unleashed prematurely if we were all in the same place at the same time?"
"Same time, yes, but not technically the same place; you'll all be in Japan, but you'll be scattered across the land. There are multiple locations where the giants have been unleashed, requiring each of you to be out there keeping the destruction to a minimum wherever possible. I'll send as many allies as I can to each location. Be careful."
"Yes, ma'am," he responded as he obeyed, getting up and running towards his horse. "It's not Thanksgiving, but I'm thankful to be a part of the Restorative!"
His horse reared up and then galloped through the wood as a mist formation appeared in front of him, taking him to his chosen location in Japan.
"Time to get the Auxiliary Spider Monkeys into play," Mother Gaia sighed.
-x-
"…I don't think this smoke is ordinary smoke, Dad," Mana told her father as they all sat in front of the fan in the living room.
"It feels like a plague," Mordecai told his daughter, "and the entire neighborhood's got it."
"It's not just the neighborhood," Miroku told his son-in-law. "It's the whole city."
"Worse," went Himeko to her father and husband. "It's more than the city. This smoke is consuming the whole country."
Using her grandfather's tablet, she showed them an update of how Japan was suddenly being plagued by a strange cloud of dark smoke that had spread across the entire country.
"Some scientists have tested the smoke, and they say it's like sulfur, but it's not harming anyone that's unprotected against it."
"I didn't know sulfur was dangerous," Miroku told them.
"It's only dangerous if it's a high amount of it," Mana explained to her grandfather, "and over a long period of time. You'd probably have to be swimming in it to develop symptoms of sulfur poisoning before succumbing to it."
"What about sulfuric acid, which is a compound of sulfur?" Mordecai asked her, raising his left hand up. "If it's in the air, it would be deadly for us to breathe in."
"So far, it's just mild sulfur, but it's not affecting anyone in any way. The police don't know what's going on. They think it's a chemical spill or a possible chemical attack…"
"What about a religious extremist, Mana?" Himeko asked her daughter.
"They're not looking into that route, Mother; they haven't found anything to indicate any significant, religious M.O."
"But this is sulfur, Mana."
"Yes, it is."
"What makes you suspect it has something to do with religion?"
"When you three were in the States, did you ever read the Old Testament? Is something like this in the Book of the Restorative?"
Realization hit Mana's conscious like a knife cutting through butter. She had seen the Four Horsemen of the Restorative, even had a few meals with Death himself, but she didn't think this had anything to do with them.
"Not sulfur," she sighed. "It's brimstone."
-x-
Stepping out of the wall of fire, Pyre found himself on the streets of Osaka, Japan, watching as the people present were running from the giants that emerged from the depths of Hell. It was normal for people to run from something greater than themselves and was as dangerous as any mortal criminal. He didn't pay them any mind; he was only present to…assess the impact Pestilence wanted to have over the ravaged land, strictly the role of an observer, as this was not his place to get involved in the affairs of humans.
"Tell me, what would you call a situation in which people are forced to run from the denizens from Hell that were unleashed upon the world?" He recalled…being asked by her.
"And I told her…it'd have to be Hellfire Wrath," he uttered to himself. "A Hellfire Wrath…because Hell is full of vengeance and fury fueled by the souls of the condemned."
Spreading his wings, Pyre flew up to the Tsutenkaku tower, enabling him to see some of what would be happening around the city; in order to assess everything happening, he would have to observe from different places within the area.
"As only a horseman or one of my infernal masters can stop me," he recalled Pestilence say to him prior to the attack, "your presence as an observer would be noncombatant in every sense. As someone that merely watches, you can't be held accountable for whatever transpires. You can't pin a crime's blame happening on a man that is bedridden and can't lift his hand up to call for assistance. That would be pinning blame on the invalids because they were present when the crime happened and did nothing to stop it."
Or blaming a baby that is too young to do anything except what it needs to stay alive, Pyre thought, watching as people ran into buildings to evade the giants chasing after them. But these humans, unfortunately… Whenever danger manifests, they become self-preservative, doing whatever they can to save themselves if they choose not to save those around them, even when faced with the possibility of failure because of their short lifespans and frailty.
"But as a whole, humans are in possession of a strength that cannot be measured, Pyre," his memory of her told him again. "Sure, we're young, we're naïve, we make mistakes all the time, we hurt each other, sometimes by accident, other times on purpose, but when we learn from our faults, we become better people. You shouldn't be so quick to deal out severe judgement every time, Pyre; otherwise, people will think wrongly of you when they should be positive."
But as much as I want to believe in their sense of redemption, they've been given more chances than a fallen angel to learn from their mistakes…and they still repeat the worst of their mistakes, regardless of their intentions or beliefs. I wanted to believe that humans can be redeemed from their reckless behavior and destructive actions against the world…but I can't believe in a race of mortals as scattered and flawed as humans any longer. What awaits them…is for their own good and the good of this damaged world that they can't save.
To be continued…
A/N: Think what you will about where this is currently going, but it will take the strength of the Restorative Horsemen and those that believe in them to resolve this new matter they're in. And as for Pyre, there's a reason for his disbelief in people being capable of redemption. Can any of you figure out why this is so, even to a small degree?