Travis Gardin
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Chapter 23: Olympus Felled
🕑 Added 2024-10-23 18:00:03 +0000 UTCWe storm into the building in full SWAT mode. In the entry hall are 12 demons dressed like secret service agents. They have handguns that shoot dark red flames. Their eyes seem to be missing, but they have no problem seeing us. I switch to Solar Mind to make shields to block bullets and protect my team as they quickly overpower the demon agents. From the halls to the left and right, dozens more guys pop out, each firing wildly at us.
Double Secret Service. Tier 2. It's a demon in a suit with a gun. Nothing fancy. It's just that there's a LOT of them. 1600 of them, to be precise. You've only killed 12 so far. Get cracking!
Possible loot: Fire pistol, nice suit, national pride.
Their skin, bright red, seems to shimmer with heat. “Don't let them close on you! There's hundreds of these guys!” I shout to the team, but mostly to Madeline and Mercy.
Mercy ducks back out of the building, shifts into her White Hat Warlock outfit, and begins to fire streams of green data at the demons from a distance.
Madeline sticks by my side, blocking shots with her shield and only swinging her sword when the odd demon closes in on us.
I focus on my shields, moving 15 of them around my allies, blocking demon fire bullets as the dozens of demons pour into the room firing at my team. Jose, Mercy, Rutger and Quins all fall back to the doorway and take cover outside as Madeline and I slowly back up. She and I both take a couple of hits ourselves, but we're both tough as nails, so that's not enough to do much to either of us.
Our ranged squad fires into the entryway over and over again. They take turns attacking, letting the others recharge and reload. The stream of bullets, exploding arrows, green data whips and emerald lightning bolts is unending. This team is on fucking fire right now.
Then gunfire erupts outside as demons come around the east and west sides of the White House. More demons open fire from above on the roof. I desperately use my shields to block as many shots as I can but there's just too many of these fuckers.
Mercy takes two bullets to her right leg. Jose gets grazed across his face. Madeline takes five bullets in her back. Quins gets tagged in the left arm. Rutger gets three fingers blown off.
We're all now huddled behind a circle of my shields. Their passive healing powers mean that our wounds should slowly get better, but we're taking hits too quickly. I use Restoring Clap, slapping my hands together and releasing a wave of healing. That buys us some time.
I need to kill. I need to keep my shields up around my allies. I need to distract the enemy.
I leap out from behind my shield wall over to the west side of the building. “I'm going to take out the President!” I shout. “You guys stay here!” The guys on the roof take the bait and target me. The demons on the west side have no choice but to target me. I reach the cluster of goons in mere seconds, then begin to lay into them with punches and kicks. I jab a face into pulp. I turn and backhand another demon. I punch another demon in the head, then another, then another, then another, then another, then another.
I look up at the demons on the roof.
Star Fall Crash
Exotic
Coat yourself in solar energy to fly and slam into a foe.
Duration: 10 seconds or impact
Speed: 250% of running speed
Cost: 50 Arcana Points
Proficiency: 9%
I use Star Fall Crash to briefly fly up and collide with the nearest demon, sending him flying 50 feet back, off the roof, and collapsing in a broken heap on the ground. I rush across the roof with speed almost six times faster than Usain Bolt. I'm running at NASCAR speeds. I slam into and through dozens of roof demons. They explode in blood and gore, they go flying off the roof, they crumple into heaps.
I come to a stop on the east side of the building and look down. There's almost a hundred demons lurking around the corner from my team, all waiting to take their turns at firing wildly at my friend's. Fuck that. I extend my hands and cast Prominence Burn, sweeping flames across the group. Their clothes burn away, but they're otherwise unharmed. Ah. They're fire elemental demons. Right.
I leap down into their midst and start punching like a mad man. Punch, dodge, punch, punch, punch, roll forward, punch, punch, uppercut. Their bullets hit me but with several techniques bolstering my Toughness I can afford to not give a shit. I'm moving at near blinding speed anyways, so their ability to target me is basically nil. Only the demons truly employing a spray-and-pray method manage to clip me. I take bullets to my shoulder. I take bullets to my chest. I get shot in the thigh. I get shot in the forehead. Each time I get hit I don't even flinch. I kill. I kill with every punch. I kill, I kill, I kill.
The windows on the east side of the building explode outwards as demons inside the White House shoot out at me. Having mostly finished the monsters out here, I leap through the window right into the east wing lobby. There are seven demons in here that I flatten. I push through to the long hall between the east wing and the main building. There are dozens of demons in this one hall. All lined up for me. I use Star Fall Crash and fly forward, enveloped in flames. I know the flames won't do jack shit, but that's fine. I hit the first guy and grab him and hold him in front of me as I continue to fly straight ahead. We plow into more demons, some getting trampled, some getting caught up in what quickly becomes a plow as demons get tangled up in each other's limbs. I push the group of them forward and the hall becomes a tangle of bodies both alive and dead. My fists fly as I charge, beating each demon once or twice. Left jab into jaw. Right cross to neck. Uppercut to stomach. Two jabs to left cheek. Knee to groin, double punch to sides of head. Roundhouse kick to chest. Jab, high punch, low kick, forward, forward, duck, rising knee, backhand, overhead chop, straight thrust, forward, uppercut, forward, jab, jab, jab, forward, cross, back slash chop, elbow, knee, front kick, side kick, cross, jab, uppercut, jab, jab, cross, jab, uppercut, roundhouse kick.
The last guy goes flying through the door, shattering it into splinters. I follow him, entering the main building and see my team has taken control of things. I scan one of the demons to get the number left. “Hey, there's only 544 of these guys left!” I say cheerily.
The others look at me aghast. “What?” I ask, then answer my own question by looking at myself.
I am COVERED in gore and black demon blood. There's almost no part of my uniform that's still white. I feel blood dripping down my face and my hair is wet and sticky. My hands look like I've been washing them in an oil derrick. I quickly wipe some demon brains off my left sleeve.
“None of this is my blood!” I quickly reassure them.
Quins has a wicked grin, Mercy looks unbelieving, Jose looks disappointed, Madeline seems disgusted, and Rutger nods saying, “fucking metal, dude.”
I use Ki Cloth Weaving to clean my clothes, and find a bathroom to rinse off the rest of me. It... Takes a while.
6/22
Washington D.C.
5:55 AM
Now that we're not surrounded, we take our time and blast away at the remaining demon bodyguards. We sweep the main building, top to bottom, then sweep the west wing, purposefully leaving the Oval Office for last.
Finally, we reload, recharge and ready ourselves for whatever nightmare is behind the Presidential desk. I kick open the door.
It looks like a meatball with stumpy little arms and legs. It almost entirely fills the room with naked, peachy pale white flesh. Various patches of grey hair dot its body. It has way too many eyes and way too many mouths and they're all over the place.
All The President Men. Tier 6. This combination of your presidents is constantly in pain, hates all people equally and is ready to sign into law a bill that legalizes the ability for it to crush you to death.
Possible loot: Signing Pen, red or blue tie.
It crashes through the wall like a fleshy kool-aid man, its three foot thick arms end in hands that have way too many fingers. It's fast. It reaches out for me and I step back, dodging 10 feet in less than a second. Madeline isn't fast. She gets grabbed by the beachball shaped fist, her arms stuck to her sides. The monster immediately holds her in front of it, like a human shield. Asshole.
Jose opens fire, shooting into the right leg. Blood and chunks of flesh fly off, only to be replaced a second later as the monster's blobby body seems capable of shifting its meat around. Ahhhh that's so gross. Quins fires an arrow into the elbow of the arm holding Madeline. The arrow explodes with just barely enough force to blow the arm off, and Madeline breaks free. Then the fingers on the arm begin to drag it back to the monster. And the chunk Jose blasted off is rolling back into place.
I do NOT like this thing. Fuck it, let's end this quick.
Astral Pathbreaker, Star Swarm!
I fire off my stars in a shotgun spread, blasting the whole front of the monster, splattering bits of 97.8% white flesh across the room. I call out, “Rutger, blast the bits!” I'm hoping Rutger can burn cauterize the separated fleshy bits. I pull my stars back as Jose, Mercy and Quins lay in with their attacks. Madeline is up front and cuts into the monster's other hand as it reaches for her.
I fire off another Star Shotgun blast, followed by a charge straight into the front of the meatball with a Star Drill. Flesh and hairy bits fly as I try to get to the center of the monster. I'm hoping for some sort of core I can shatter and end this thing. I get punched from my right, three arms forming and hitting with way more strength than that of the average President. I get thrown to the side and have to roll further right as I narrowly evade one of Madeline's mighty Chlamydia strikes.
The ripped off blobs of flesh don't bleed. Instead, they tend to grow fingers which they use as spider legs. Then they either run back to the big boy, or grow a mouth and try to bite someone. Madeline has resorted to using her data stream whip to knock blobs off of others.
A blob climbs up Madeline's back as she swings Chlamydia. Mercy whips the blob away. Madeline slashes and then gives Mercy a thumbs up.
Let's try something new. I switch to Void Mind while Star Swarm is still active, and as I'd hoped, the stars turn void bright purple. On each four-pointed star, one of the arms lengthens, making each more like a dagger. I aim the 100+ stars at the blob and throw them, pointy end first. The dagger stars stab in, and some of them trigger Entropy motes. I rapidly withdraw and stab those points, triggering the void explosions I'm coming to know and love. I start pulling and throwing in rapid succession, so that there seems to be a constant stream of blades circling the monster. With dozens of strikes per second I'm triggering Entropy several times per second, and the rapid explosions are rearing through the monster. I start focusing on its center mass and soon the massive meatball has a crater in its middle. It grows more arms, which suddenly try to get in front of the dagger stream, but Madeline chops one off and Jose and Quins take out the others.
Mercy and Rutger attack fallen meat chunks and with enough damage those seem to actually die. But there's now sooo many of the damn things. Each inch of progress I make sends another blob out that has to be dealt with. By now dozens of blobs are running around, with dozens more dead. The blobs run away, they try to bite legs, they try to get back to the father blob. Founding father blob? Anyways, they're scuttling around like a swarm of flesh crabs and I just want this to be over.
Faster, faster, faster. I strike with the star daggers over and over again, my team blasting every moving part of the monster as I drive my attacks towards the core it's trying to guard. One of my Entropy explosions exposes something shining and golden. In the split second before my star daggers rip it apart, I recognize it. It's a golden tree branch. The branch gets broken, snapped into tiny pieces, and the entire monster collapses, sagging into a large puddle of pinkish flesh like runny pancake batter.
Mercy sums it up. “Jun, you take me to the nicest places.” Followed immediately by, “Biscuits, don't eat that!”
