Grinning Devil

The road cracked with each of his steps. His mind that was usually filled by information given to him by his enhanced senses and the various high-speed thought processes that he had finally gotten used to after years of practice were nowhere to be seen.

One could call it a tranquil lake which looked untouched by any stray thought, a stark comparison to the multiple torrential floods that it was in its original state. Now he had become a creature of impulse, the moment was all that mattered to him; his body was like a marionette that had come to life.

It was free, unfettered by the hesitation or slight delay that the brain would impose on its movements. Nevertheless, even a marionette with its strings cut could remember in every fiber of his being how the puppeteer moved his every limb. After all, the actions he had done so often had become as natural as breathing.

He jumped over, pushed aside, and did whatever he could to move through the horde of rushing citizens of the District. Reflected on his mask was a particular building that stood above the rest and that was somewhat in better condition. A perfect vantage point for a sniper to take a shot where Khutulun and Chiyome were.

The huge wave of people coming in would put a halt to his advance, so the Grinning Devil decided to use the ground. Using the shoulders of one of the more robust citizens, he used it to spring himself upwards and reach the rooftops. The sound of screaming was quickly silenced by the noise of foot stompings.

Parkouring through the various rooftops gave him the sight of the mess that the city had become. Just a few kilometers on his left he was seeing a huge marble-like Adonis using its greatsword to cleave in half the members of the Black Hand it was fighting. The sound of a heavy machine gun was clearly audible, the high caliber bullets ricocheting off its skin and killing whichever unlucky fucker was close to it. It was not until they used rocket launchers and explosives that its seemingly unstoppable onslaught was put to a halt.

“...”

He noted in his mind the location of these explosives ordinances, they could turn out useful down the line. His attention went back to the building he was trying to reach. Jumping inside from one of the windows would take away too much time, the citizens that were inside and that were trying to run away would slow him down too much. His eyes turned to the ledge of the building. It was a long jump upward, at least 5 meters in height and 15 meters in length. No normal human would even dare to think to perform such a feat.

The Grinning Devil grinned under his mask, his breathing turned ragged and his heart started beating too fast, too strong. Blood started dripping from his nose and the capillaries in his eyes blew, turning his white sclera totally red. The floor started to crack until he was at the ledge of his building. His center of mass was as low as possible, the muscles in his leg threatening to tear at the enormous amount of force they were being subjected to. Then, like a human-sized rocket, he flew.

His chest pushed forward to give him as much aerodynamicity as possible. His upper arms crashed into the ledge of the building, causing the Grinning Devil to spit some blood in the process. As soon as he swallowed the blood down, he quickly rose up and found himself at the top of the building.

The only thing that was there was a sniper rifle positioned down with some cartridges by its side. No sign of the sniper. He focused his senses to pick up anything out of place, but nothing seemed abnormal or strange to him. Whoever this guy was, he was a professional at least. The Grinning Devil looked again at the sniper rifle, examining it attentively.

It was an Izhmash Tigr-Ver 03-05, at least the base design of it was inspired from it. Its receiver, barrel, stock, and optic were clearly custom made. It was so high grade that the Devil thought it had to be one of the few pre-Great War Russian weapons that had somehow survived being deconstructed into scraps. Either that or whoever owned this sniper had spent a fortune on it.

The Grinning Devil’s hand hovered closer to his gun. There was no thought telling him to do that, but something felt off. Even without his mind telling him the connections from the various clues, his unconscious mind was picking up on the clues and was already making his body ready.

A few milliseconds later, an explosion originating from under his feet flung him up in the air, toward the ledge of the building. Thankfully it was not a powerful explosive since his legs were just singed and not torn off. While falling by the building's side, the Grinning Devil grabbed onto the window lintel and used it to push himself inside. Thankfully most of the people had left, but he still crashed into some of them.

He got up and noticed that the fire on his legs was not going out, but was instead spreading all over his body. Most of his clothes were fire-resistant but that did not make the pain any less overwhelming. Activating the air filtering feature of his mask, he started running towards the top of the building again. The people that saw him pass by mistook him for a fiery demon, an incarnation of the dying city. The older ones called him “Raróg”, the legend of a flaming being became a legend in the region.

With a shoulder bash, the door to the rooftop was flung from its hinges. In the direction of the now flying hazard stood a man wearing civilian clothes, the sniper rifle that was on the ledge now in his hands and trained at the incoming Devil. The sniper's eyes turned wide open and he quickly rolled to the side to avoid the door. Once he finished his combat roll, he was in a crouched position, his eye on the scope and the barrel right on top of the flaming Devil.

Unfortunately, the Raróg was already on top of him. A kick hit the sniper on the side of his head, making him fly a few meters away and dropping his gun. The Grinning Devil started to slowly walk towards him, the flames had now enveloped his whole body, he looked more like a humanoid shaped flame than an actual human.

The sniper, whose clothes had started to be on fire, immediately got up, dropped his jacket, and tried to jump off the building. The Grinning Devil grabbed him by the neck before gravity could take its hold on him and threw him to the other side of the roof.

The man slowly got up again, cuts on his arms beginning to bleed some of the precious red liquid. From his belt, he took a metallic canister and sprayed it at his nape. His face flushed red, tears beginning to form in his eyes. After doing so, he looked at the canister and his eyes widened. He tried to jump off again, but this time, before putting his foot on the ledge, he threw the canister at the flaming demon.

“Oa Geschenk für dir, du abscheuliche Monsta!" He shouted while giving him the middle finger.

This time he was able to almost disappear from sight of the ledge, but before any more positive emotions could reach his heart, he felt a stinging sensation on his wrist, which then turned into a sharp pain, eliciting a quick intake of air through gritted teeth. The man looked up and saw the humanoid fire grabbing at his wrist. Before he could think of anything else, he was pulled up and thrown at the wall near the stairs, the impact strong enough to make cracks in the cement and make him throw up.

He tried to stand up, but quickly noticed that he could not use his right hand to help him get on his feet. The pain from his injuries made him sweat profusely, nevertheless, he still tried to run for the stairs. Halfway through the first flight, he felt a scorching heat on his back. The pain from his burning skin was enough to make him miss a step and crash down face first on the landing.

For a second he had lost consciousness, but a stinging sensation on his left ankle brought him back. Looking down on it, he noticed the flaming figure dragging him back to the rooftop. His ankle had been burned so much that once they were back at the top of the stairs the man could see that the only thing keeping his foot attached to his body was a thin, now carbonized, stretch of skin that would break as soon as he tried to put his weight on it.

He tried to sneakily take out a syringe from his belt. The syringe was surprisingly in pristine condition; inside of it, a violet-colored liquid gently swayed about. A smile was beginning to form on the man’s face, but it soon got enveloped by a wave of fire. The sounds of his screams filled the air, his hand letting go of the syringe and trying to put out the fire that was eating at its face.

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It took a while, trying to work with just one hand is not that simple, but through the shredding of his shirt and pants he was able to stop the fire, although the chillness that he felt as the wind caressed his face told him that it was not looking too good for him. He closed his eyes and thought of when he accepted this damn mission from the EUP. Biggest mistake of his life.

A chuckle escaped him which then turned into full-on laughter. Until adrenaline was running through his veins and kept the pain at a manageable level, he would use it to enjoy his last few moments. For what is a man but the sum of all of his regrets?

A stray thought passed on his mind: to beg for forgiveness, but he already knew what kind of man (if one could call it so) he was dealing with. He even killed his partner so there was no way he would let it go easily. Opening his eyes again he noticed that he was losing sight from one of them. He slowly crawled to the ledge of the building and put his back to it. Immediately he regretted doing that as a sharp pain jump started his sleeping mind into full throttle. So instead he turned around and laid his chest on the ledge, with his head and arms hanging out.

Carefully he took out a crumpled cigarette box from his belt and opened it. A tired grin appeared on his face, the movements of it causing his skin to crack and bleed. He dropped off the box, watching intensively as it fell down on the ground below.

“Tu da schlimmstes, Satan…” He said weakly, not even bothering to turn around and look at the monster that had made him like this.

The Grinning Devil, which in the meanwhile had put out the fire, dropped the baking powder carton box by the side and dusted off the remains of it from his clothes. Using a rope, he bound the man’s feet together and then made a knot on the handrail of the stairs. He walked back towards the man and started rummaging through the man's belongings.

He found a crumbled picture of the man side by side with a pregnant woman. A pure smile on their faces as they embraced each other, their eyes soft and filled with love. He put the crumbled picture into the man’s working hand which glanced at it and started to hiccup. No tears came down to his cheeks since his tear duct had been burned.

The other thing he found was a rectangular metallic lighter and a pad with the insignia of the EUP edged into it. He put the pad in his pocket and played with the lighter a bit. It was on the heavier side but neatly decorated with a heart incision on one side and a brain on the other. Quickly using it, the Grinning Devil noticed that it was a petrol lighter.

"We-wenn du moa Frau triffst ... sach ihr ... da isch se liebe." The burned man said in between his ragged breaths.

The Devil stood silent, looking at the flame from the lighter before throwing it at him.

"Du hattest die chance es ihr selbst zu sagen."

The flames started to slowly spread from his clothes to his whole person. Before the flame reached his neck, the Grinning Devil grabbed it, lifted him up, and then dropped him off the building. The Devil held the rope with one hand, he did not want for the rope to be snapped by the momentum of his fall and then for the drop to kill him. He had to suffer a bit more.

After the rope started to be in tension, he took his hand off it and walked to the sniper rifle. A single stomp was enough to destroy it, making pieces of it fly all over the roof. After that, the Grinning Devil started to run towards the battlefield. If the sniper was lucky, the fire would burn the rope at his feet and let him pull to the ground, ending his suffering. Though the Devil hoped he would have died from the flames long before that happened.

The wounds he had suffered from the fire were already in the process of healing though it would take a few minutes before the wind stopped feeling like blades cutting into his exposed skin.

The Black Hand had been financed quite well to have so many combatants and weaponry good enough to fight all the three factions of Ural Polis. He decided to drop to ground level and see if he could pick up anything useful or gain any more information on where to find Father Mathias and Abraham Fu.

In front of him, he found a group of the Lion Share being pinned down in a building. Even if they were a dozen and the enemy was double their numbers, they were holding valiantly. Each time one of the Black Hand would get closer, a rifleman of the Lion Share would pop his head out of one of the many windows of the building and hit the enemy center mass.

“They are quite well trained.”

No wonder most of the factions, inside and outside Ural Polis felt threatened by them. If they had given Fjodor a few more years he, and Lion Share, could have become one of the most important figures in Europe.

From behind the Black Hand line, he noticed some of them bringing out of one of the neighboring buildings an ATGM, most specifically a 9M133 Kornet. The sight of them made him remember of the time when he fought during the Great Last War.

Nevertheless, if they used that against the building where the Lion Share members were in, they would all die, be it from the explosion or the building collapsing on them. He could not allow that missile to be wasted in such a way.

The Grinning Devil took out his laser pistol and when he was close enough took a shot at each of the Black Hand members. When they noticed what had just happened it was too late, the Grinning Devil had killed most of them in the span of seconds, leaving the stragglers a choice to either run up to him and die or turn their back to him and run away. After the first few deaths of people trying to fight him, the few surviving ones ran with all their might… until they found themselves in a melee with the Lion Share members that, seeing the opportunity to break this encirclement, charged in and killed the remaining ones.

Without stopping to check on the Lion Share, the Grinning Devil grabbed the ATMG and ran up to one of the neighboring buildings. After placing down and preparing the missile launcher, he took out his pad and started to look for possible connections close to his locations. Most of them were from the Black Hand, but he was able to find two of them that picked his interest, one from the Iron Dragon territory and one from the Church’s District, both of them with quite the extensive encryption. Thankfully Khutulun had left her program inside his pad which made quick work of it and was able to send a message to them both.

He sent a message to both of them, telling them to meet in a zone in between their territories, where they would discuss their next plan of action. After waiting for a few seconds, he saw something fly up from the Third District and started flying towards his position. The Grinning Devil Turned his pad off, put it back in his jacket’s pocket, and focused all his attention on the movements of the Angel. Once he felt sure of his aim, he launched the rocket which hit the target.

They crashed a few buildings of his own, hopefully, the man that the Angel was carrying was alive. Though he did not care either way. He brought out the EUP pad that he had taken from the sniper and started fiddling with it, deleting most of the useless information that was in there, leaving only the one who would be able to persuade Father Mathias (if he was still alive) and Abraham Fu.

After doing that, he smashed the ATMG apart and started parkouring around the rooftops, getting closer to the crash landing while avoiding their surveillance. If the Head Bitch wanted to deal with him like this, he would show her that he was not like the pawns she was so much used to manipulating.

His mind turned back to Khutulun, new emotions sprouting inside him, destroying the peace of his inner mind.

“If…If Khutulun doesn’t make it, I will show her why they call me a Grinning Devil.”

A smile began to form under his mask that stayed present on his face until he reached the crashed Angel’s position.