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Ikarus Protocol
32. Charlie

32. Charlie

V – 00003.2 – Charlie.

A growl tore itself free of my fangs as I passed through the welcome signs to Anchorage. Shaking off the pain of my mutations turning off, I kept walking, and the dilapidated city greeted me with silence. I began scanning my environment, looking at the world through the grayscale my mutated eyes provided me.

Stalking through the streets, I flexed my body, stretching and bulging my enhanced muscles to their maximum, putting my body through its paces for a moment. The last remnants of my black shirt strained against my musculature, fighting valiantly to keep me decent, but eventually the last stitches tore away from my body, and the fabric fell away to the street.

Black archaic line tattoos phased out from my core and etched themselves into my skin as a mystical mixture of circuitry and arcane symbols. Glowing red runes faintly hummed in the black, and a large bloody ohm symbol encircled the tattoos on my core.

The Bloody rune in my chest hummed softly in my head, infernal chains twisted around the soul I had imprisoned, which had thankfully fully regenerated, the cracks and dead spots in its spiritual body having once again reignited in vibrant teal un-life.

Black smoke began billowing out of the tattooed orbs of darkness that adorned my shoulders; slowly, more and more smoke poured from my arms until mist was wafting from every interconnected tattoo in my arms, leaving a black wake where I once stood. Slowly, the darkness took shape, twisting in on itself as if blown by death's loveless lips.

The smoke contorted into humanoid forms before solidifying into my shades, who fell in line behind me, walking in perfect synchronicity with me and each other.

Storming through the streets, I made a B-line for the old warehouse where I knew the reapers had set up shop, and before long I was standing outside the fenced-in walls that protected the defunct office, factory, and warehouse combination from me.

I leapt up and over the wrought iron gates with ease, flowing over the obstacle almost silently save for the creaking of metal hinges struggling under my monstrous weight. Crouching low, I crept from shadow to shadow, relying on my fledgling stealth skill, which occasionally chimed in, telling me to turn my body to minimize my profile and how to step more silently.

Before long, I was barely a few feet from the thin steel door that kept reapers from me; eyes narrowed, my features began contorting into a predatory rage as I stared down at the lone guard smoking a cigarette from the darkness.

Leaping forwards I left the shadows, claws raised with murder painting my face; I finally stopped repressing the furious storm of emotions I felt poisoning me.

My hand swung down when I landed before the gangbanger; the steel platform that led to the door banged loudly as my massive weight was slammed down upon it, my bladed fingers ripped into the Reaper's skull, my four fingers digging into his jaw, eye, temple, and cheek.

My claws parted his flesh, and I butchered him; claws crushed his eye, cracked his skull, shredded his face, and ripped out teeth. I closed my hand with my fingers still inside his head. Raising my arm and lifting the screaming, twitching, bleeding man into the air, I spun around, throwing all my weight behind the body I was holding, smashing him into the steel door, denting the weak metal as it blew off its hinges. The man’s skull splattered into strawberry jam around my fingers shortly after his impromptu makeout session with the portal to my enemies.

My vision went from grayscale to colorful as blood splattered my face and light stabbed my eyes. I shook my hand, flicking the gore off as I stepped past the ripped-off door and stared towards my victims.

The small factory floor had been completely cleared out, with chairs and benches replacing the workshop, similar to a hall or cafeteria… The room was packed with people just sitting by firelight, candles, and lanterns, eating, drinking, and smoking as if they hadn’t a care in the world.

The men and women who filled the room stared towards my half-naked, blood-covered form, eyes wide, mouths agape in shock, seemingly struggling to process that some herculean, pale, monstrous, tattooed fucker covered in blood just kicked in their door.

For my part, I too stood still, momentarily overcome by rage and grief, my momentum ripped from me like the wind from a sail. My internal monologue failed me; no voices provided witty commentary, and only one word fell from my mouth before the red fog claimed my mind. “Kill.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I leapt forward, lunging at the nearest man; bringing my claws up as I reached him, I stabbed him in the stomach with my fingers, before disemboweling him with my bare hands. My shades followed me inside, obeying my commandment; they started attacking the gangsters.

I felt a constant drain on my core as they attacked, overexerted themselves, and even had to regenerate and pull their bodies back together from being attacked themselves.

A set of shots rang out, massive booms filling the hall as a set of bullets hammered into my shades, the smoke that made them up exploding away from their bodies and dispersing into the air, with an incredible heave on my core, smoke flew out of my tattoos like the backdraft on a building in flames when a window is shattered, and into my shades, pulling their bodies together.

Fresh death mana slammed into my shades, reconstituting and empowering them. Moments after they were destroyed, they resumed their attacks with brutal, uncaring efficiency, lifting and breaking their prey. I squeezed my adrenal vault and watched the world stutter and slow. As I dived into the fray, I slashed and kicked, punched, and flailed, with each and every movement doing catastrophic harm or claiming another life.

A constant buzz took root in my mind as I ignored my kill notices; blows were raining down upon me as I attacked with reckless abandon and ferocious speed.

found the few hits that did connect utterly pathetic; with my massively increased bone muscle density along with my impact-resistant skin, it was like being hit by children, or at least it was.

My head snapped to the right as a massive punch sent me staggering to the ground. I started to pick myself back up when I saw a massive boot coming down on top of my head. I raised my hands trying to block, but the kick never came. Glancing around, the giant of a man who was about to stomp me into the ground was being tackled to the floor by my shades, who were both pinning his shoulders and pounding him into the ground.

Dragging myself to my feet, I twisted sideways and kicked up high, slicing through a man’s throat with my clawed toes. Massively drawing on my core, a wave of mist exploded out of my body, which only a few people seemed to notice as all save for three people kept shooting at and charging me as the death mana poured from my tattoos.

All at once I ripped my death mana back, wrapping the tendrils of black around the corpses as I did; the spirits of the dead wailed into my unholy miasma as they were dragged literally kicking and screaming into my core. I gave the dead no time to adjust to their new existence, forcing the nine new shades to materialize from my core.

Ethereal monsters were thrown into the battle, compelled by the forces of death to murder their one-time comrades in a deeply ironic twist of fate; I vaulted over a table, drawing gently on the chain of thorns, and the glow in my chest flashed slightly as supernatural speed and strength flooded me, throwing me over the table and into another gangster.

As I slammed into him, riding him into the ground, I felt an uncomfortable sharpness in my side as he tried to stab me; the blade barely managed to break my rubbery skin as I grabbed his jaw and twisted hard, snapping his neck.

I didn’t even need to look around to know more and more of the reapers were dying; the heavy draw on my core, along with the violent haptic buzzing taking place in my skull, told me the body count rose with every second that passed.

Leaping to my feet, I scanned the environment, noting how the scales had shifted with my shades now outnumbering the reapers in the room. My shades attacked two and three on one with no care for honor; slowly the pull on my core began to dwindle as they no longer needed my dark strength to win, just numbers.

Raising my hand, I shouted for my shades to stop before they killed the last two men in the room. The tireless engines of death that had beaten most of the reapers to death stopped instantaneously. They stopped, leaving the room full of black shadows, each frozen mid-punch with their arms cocked back or foot raised.

“Restrain them,” I commanded. I turned away, trusting my shades to do as I bid. Reaching into my core once again and pulling on the darkness within, I expelled it outwards to latch onto more spirits. I repeated the process with my infernal mana; the runes in my skin shone brighter as demonic chains escaped them and began to flow through the smoke, striking out and binding corpses, ripping, tearing, and pulling souls out.

Soul after soul, spirit after spirit flowed through my magic and into my gluttonous core.

Finished with my snack, I turned to the men I spared and saw them on their knees, a shade on each side, stepping on their ankles, with an additional two holding them down by the shoulders. I stepped towards them, quite pleased with how my impromptu siege went until I saw my three were missing from my kill counter; including these two, I was five short of my quest.

I raised my hand and backhanded one of my prisoners hard, my knuckles hammering his jaw, snapping his head right. “Three of you are missing; where are they?” I growled out.

“Please… why, why are you doing this?” The man I had just beaten whined a question instead of answering mine, an act which filled me with fury.

“You have the fucking audacity to ask me why! Oh, I don’t know, maybe it’s all the robberies, murders, the drugs, the protection fees, the rapes you people cause… You fuckers are a stain on the earth; sure, you might be outwardly evil, but your whole species is an illness I cannot abide. And now here you kneel whining and begging as if you don’t deserve this.”

I reached out and grabbed the sniveling stain of skin before me and felt my infernal mana flare out; the spiked chains exploded out violently. The man I was holding stared at me in terror, yet it was the other one I noticed; he wasn’t staring at me but at the massive chains hanging over his friend like a noose.

“You’re not going to hell… You’re going somewhere far, far worse!” I spat as my infernal mana slammed into my prisoner, ripping through his paltry aura and diving into his body, diving grooves in his skin and flowing in through his mouth. My chains split up once inside the man, and they twisted around his soul and core, and then I stopped them.

I split my focus and pulled on the chain of torture I had discovered previously; I watched the symbols of my mana contort into an ohm as spikes lanced out of the chains and gripped the man’s soul. He screamed in agony; his voice rang out as if Satan himself was torturing the thug. Before long his screams died, not for lack of trying; his face was still twisted into horrible agony, but his vocal cords tore as I crushed his soul in his body.

“Enough!” I shouted before tearing backwards on my mana, ripping his soul core and spirit out all at once, swallowing them into my runes and tattoos.

Stepping to the side, I stood over my last remaining prisoner. “Tell me, are you also going to ask me stupid, infuriating questions that will make me torture you?” I asked in a tone sickly sweet and dripping with venom.

“N… No,” said a shaky and terrified voice.

“Wonderful,” I said with a malicious smile, flashing my sharp teeth that resembled a cross between a wolf and a shark.