With a small cracking noise, Jaeger shot up from his sleeping position, his flint-lock pistol aiming at where the noise originated from, only to find a familiar face making him put his pistol away.
“Oh, it’s you Viktor… so, have you found the information I was looking for?” Jaeger asked, and the man, Viktor nodded.
Viktor dressed in a different manner to Jaeger, who looked like he stepped out from either Victorian England or something of the sort, as Viktor dressed in a suit which fit his frame well, and wore sunglasses…
Mostly because they made him look professional, unlike his younger face. Despite being twenty eight, only slightly younger than Jaeger himself, Viktor had a face that made him seem only twenty or so.
So he liked looking more professional because his own face destroyed that attempt usually.
“Yeah, I managed to find some good information on the group you were tailing.” Viktor walked closer to the bed Jaeger was resting on and sat on a nearby chair to give his report.
“We’ve determined there to be seven Chained in the group… however they are quite different from the normal Chained you hunt.” Viktor added as Jaeger raised a brow.
“Well, apparently all seven of them are human in appearance, despite the fact that only one of them is a Mechanical-Chained.” Viktor added and Jaeger was now intrigued…
His father and his grandfather had all hunted the Chained, starting with his grandfather. His grandfather had been in the military and had refused to accept an order to hunt down and kill a turn-coat because said person was a friend.
Due to this refusal to do his duty, his grandfather had been thrown into the newly made Tartarus. From there, he had lived quietly in Area 3 for a while, until the Chained started appearing.
At first, many were sceptical, but overtime everyone came to know of the existence of the Chained. Jaeger’s grandfather wasn’t one to go out and fight them, at first… but then one of the Chained tried to start taking over Areas, acting as warlords…
His grandfather refused to allow such abuse of power, as he had his own morals to follow, and so, with knowledge of how to smith guns due to it being a major hobby of his, he made a few rudimentary weapons and went out to fight.
It took quite a bit of effort, but he ended up slaying the Chained, and from there, things changed for quite a few in the prison, now with the knowledge that the Chained were not invincible…
But they were still strong, and nigh unbeatable… but his grandfather could beat them.
And so, his grandfather would become the first hunter, and when his father was born, he would be trained to be the second, and now, Jaeger was the third.
And from his grandfather’s time, until now, there had been no mention of humanoid Biological Chained other than the Mechanical-Chained… and one other…
But that one had been missing for quite long, and Jaeger wasn’t even sure if that Chained was even alive at this point.
So hearing about six humanoid, Biological Chained, was quite interesting, and his eyes reflected his new found interest as Viktor smirked inwardly at his presentation working.
“From what we understand, one of the seven is the Minotaur, who has left his Labyrinth behind apparently… we’re not sure on the girl in the group, the triplets are the Hydra collectively and the Mechanical-Chained would be Cyclops the car dealer.” Viktor explained as Jaeger frowned at the last one mentioned…
Cyclops wasn’t really a problem, but Jaeger was taught from a young age that the Chained were dangerous to be left alone…
So he had threatened Cyclops once, and had gotten Cyclops word that he had no reason to leave Area 6, which is why he left him alone. Within Area 6, Cyclops was practically a king, though a good one.
But now he had left the sanctuary, for what reason though…
“As for the final member of the seven, it appears this one is the leader, we don’t have a name for him, but one of the informants we have mentioned quite a while ago that the white prison in Area 7 had been empty for a while… we believe this is the Chained that had been inside that place.” Viktor explained as Jaeger focused…
This Chained somehow managed to convince/overpower six other Chained to follow him, even if three of them counted as one creature originally, so he was the most dangerous nominally.
“From eyewitness reports, he appears to look like a fifteen year old with white hair and green eyes, and fights using Chinese martial arts and a strange whip like material from his arms and legs.” Jaeger nodded at this as he held his pistol in front of him and began maintenance on his weapon…
Well, one of his weapons.
“In addition… they have a normal human with them. We aren’t sure on the relation, but he might be a hostage being forced to serve them… or he could be similar to Vann.” Jaeger scowled at the name mentioned… Vann… he hated the man with a passion.
“We’re not sure on the human’s name but that’s the important bit. As for information on their fighting styles, I’m certain you already know that.” Viktor added as Jaeger scoffed.
“Who do you take me for? Of course I know their fighting styles. I’d like to watch them for a while, but that hostage needs a bit of help.” Jaeger stood, and Viktor nodded, standing and following him.
Outside, a hearse was waiting, with a man standing against the car smoking a cigarette as he stood up straight at Jaeger’s appearance, nodding at his superior as Jaeger nodded back, walking to the back of the hearse.
Opening the back, a large case was there, as he pulled it and sat it on the ground instead of in the car, opening it. Within were his weapons that he brought out for bigger targets, such as the group he’d be going against shortly.
A few knives, some for throwing, others to be used in hand, three more pistols for quick use, and a longer barrelled gun which was in fact a shotgun, with long reloading times, so it was rarely used, and a musket…
And finally he saw a sword, making Jaeger blink as he looked to Viktor who smirked at his reaction.
“We recall you wanting one. A European sword is difficult to find, even in this place where the unwanted of the world gathers.” Viktor liked to sound grandiose but what he meant was simple.
‘You wanted one, so we looked all over just to get you one because you mentioned it once.’ Was the meaning there… and Jaeger was touched as he raised the weapon, finding it to be a comfortable weight, the sheath being easily hidden with his coat.
“Thanks Viktor… my father had one, and taught me how to use it, but his one broke when he died.” Indeed, Jaeger wasn’t too sentimental on how his father died, as he had died fighting a Chained, namely the leader of the Mercenaries…
The only regret Jaeger had about that situation was that his father hadn’t told him who or where the Mercenary leader was beyond saying near Area 8… and each Area was too big for him to find that out.
“Of course, you’re the boss after all. We’ll be expecting good news.” Viktor added as both he and the driver of the hearse went away… after all, the two of them, despite being better fighters than most in this prison, were still normal…
Jaeger, despite being un-enhanced like the Chained, was not.
Jaeger came from a family of hunters, and was trained by his father to know the disadvantages of his weapons keenly, as well as the advantages. The Hunter’s, in other words, his grandfather and father, used these guns and any other weapons available to slay their enemies.
Blades were an important part of their arsenal, in that their main weaponry, the guns and their bullets, took quite a while to reload due to their antique nature, despite being newer models…
The issue, in Jaeger’s opinion, as he strapped the weapons on himself, was that their weaponry was powerful within the prison, but only in the prison. They knew not how to create modern technology, and because of that, they were severely handicapped…
This didn’t stop Jaeger from killing seven Chained in a year though. He had the highest kill count of the three Hunters that had existed, though he thought to himself that it was mostly because of the information network and resources provided by Viktor and his group.
As Jaeger climbed onto a roof, looking to the intersection points between Area 6 and Area 8, running that way, he thought to his first meeting with Viktor…
Viktor was born in Tartarus much like Jaeger was… the difference being, while Jaeger was born in the military like Area 3 where the Hunter, his father, lived and thrived, Viktor was born in Area 4, the son of some rapist and his slave.
And Viktor hated his family for certain, having killed his own father for abusing and raping his mother, and then after seeing what Viktor had done his mother had taken her own life to be with her father…
Stockholm syndrome it was called apparently… sympathizing with those hurting you as if you deserved it. Viktor hated anyone like that, as he would be reminded of the mother he could have had.
After killing his own father, and then witnessing his mother kill herself to join his father, Viktor couldn’t handle the way of life in Area 4 anymore and left. He’d end up in Area 3 within a week or two.
He’d then get captured by the Chained known as Satyr… the reason why no one knows about Satyr is because Jaeger’s father had killed the Chained for attempting to harm an innocent…
After being saved, despite being thankful for being saved, Viktor admitted that he didn’t see much value in a child who killed one parent and watched the other commit suicide without doing anything…
Jaeger’s father denied the lack of value, stating that all human beings are valuable, even the despicable ones. Even the Chained, as vile as most of them were, not all of them were like that, like Cyclops who just built cars quietly in Area 6.
And Jaeger’s father also stated that even if Viktor no longer considered himself innocent, Jaeger’s father considered him of no fault in what happened.
So that night, Jaeger found his father walking into their home with a crying child who was glaring at everything. That was the first time Jaeger had met Viktor, and he was so glad for it…
Jaeger frowned at an upcoming jump and noticed an air-conditioning unit on the outside of the building he was on. With a hop, he was on the fan and his next jump allowed him to make the jump easily as he fell into his thoughts once more.
Viktor had been a constant in his life since then, an easy acquaintance that idolized Jaeger’s father and, upon seeing Jaeger’s budding skill, began to idolize Jaeger as well… though Viktor would always be more comfortable with Jaeger than with the previous Hunter.
They had become best friends, Viktor and Jaeger sparred often, and they got into fights and, despite being in the worst place on earth, they felt life was normal…
Up until Jaeger turned twenty and began to go out on his own hunts. Then things changed, not by a huge amount, but Jaeger began to get… better. At an unreasonable pace that Viktor just couldn’t keep up with.
Apparently the reason for that was the old idiom of one year of war is equivalent to ten years non-stop training… the real fights Jaeger was getting into, with beings beyond normal man, and somehow winning, was shaping him up into a better fighter and tactician.
By the time Jaeger had killed his third Chained, Viktor was no longer much of a challenge and Viktor fell whole-heartedly into his support role, bringing along the weapons and information Jaeger needed for his next hunt…
But there was only so much Viktor could do by himself, so he began to get others from Area 3 to help out, then other areas overtime… by the time Jaeger was twenty four, the Eyes of the Hunter was quite sizeable for most ‘gangs’…
Then his father died and Jaeger had been quiet for a while, trying to deal with that loss… Jaeger didn’t know what to make of it.
He loved his father, but in spite of that love Jaeger honestly didn’t think the man was a good father all the same.
His father was strict, enforcing training, rarely giving Jaeger free time, placing Jaeger into the mould that produced him, and hoping that Jaeger would come out similarly.
Jaeger frowned even as he saw a bigger building in his way and shook his head… he had planned to not run to this one since he couldn’t get up it quickly, but in his thought-induced haze he hadn’t noticed.
With a turn, Jaeger began going around, attempting to focus even as he went back into thought… it was his own guilty pleasure really, to think about everything he could before a Hunt… it kept his mind clean and calm, where the alternative would be fear and terror…
He is fighting people beyond human when it comes to abilities after all… winning such people in a fight requires either technology or other advantages.
Jaeger went back into his thoughts of his father, even as he noticed himself coming up on his target, the large double-decked bus not moving at current.
Jaeger’s father had told him from a young age that Jaeger would end up following in his footsteps, hunting the Chained and protecting those who could not fight back…
Jaeger had always hated that. That he would be so easily cast into the same position that killed his grandfather and his father as well, and be expected to want to do that.
He didn’t, at all really… some days he wondered why he still fought the Chained at all at this point… it got worse when some of the Chained he met spoke to him…
And he realized that killing a monster is much easier than killing a human. There is less emotional baggage with the first when compared to the second… and the Chained, for all their looks and abilities, were in fact human…
Something that his grandfather completely ignored to become the Hunter and kill every Chained he met, regardless of their actual thoughts or feelings, labelling them as monsters because of what they were.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
His father was better, acknowledging certain Chained and refusing to fight them or at the very least, sparing them after defeating them and making sure they feared him…
And with Jaeger, he just didn’t see the appeal much anymore… he maintained his ‘job’ as the Hunter, but you know, he just didn’t like killing anymore… at first, he did it happily…
Then he killed a Mechanical-Chained and had a small child run up to him, a normal boy like himself, shouting about revenge for Jaeger having killed his father.
That was the day that Jaeger truly realized that his father and grandfather, treated as heroes to the normal people in Tartarus, were more monstrous than some of the things they fought.
Not all Chained were good though, there was a reason people stayed away from Toy Land, the area under the control of the Toy-Maker, or why the Mercenaries and the Assassins were dangerous, but again, not everyone was so bad.
Cyclops for example, was someone Jaeger let go…
But not if he was in a group like this… a group of seven Chained combined… there was a case like this, in the time of Jaeger’s grandfather, the first Hunter… the group called themselves the Seven Sins, and were full of weird Chained…
They were slaughtered to the last by Jaeger’s grandfather, one by one.
But they were considered the most dangerous of their time due to how they were always together… Jaeger’s grandfather won by separating them, but it was dangerous.
Since then, few groups gather because it is sure to attract the attention of the Hunter. If the group was too big, the Hunter would have to separate them first…
Jaeger wouldn’t need to do that though, as he approached and saw the stopped hover-bus… a bus that has no wheels. Jaeger never thought he’d see something like that really…
And he saw their group and frowned, mentally tacking names and abilities to who he was seeing, and double-taking when he saw Minotaur once more… because instead of roughly four, five metre tall cow-monster, it was a tall man with bull-horns…
And the cause of that could only be their leader… the smaller one with white hair had to be the leader of this group, considering the others deferred to him.
So that left Cyclops, Minotaur, the three heads of the Hydra, the female and the leader… the female and the leader were general unknowns but someone mentioned that the female could shape-shift…
It had to be Empusa. Jaeger recalled her abilities… She had the ability to let of pheromones which made those around her retarded, aka horny, and more subservient… but her combat based ability was shape-shifting.
Jaeger frowned at the group composition and decided his plan of attack. See, normally he’d go for the leader first, cause chaos and then separate the group through some manner…
But he also knew that, while there were seven Chained down there, it could also be looked at as there only being five. Cyclops, Empusa, Minotaur and the leader, the triplets could count as one if necessary.
So Jaeger had his plan. He would attack Empusa first as she could addle his mind, which was his most dangerous weapon, and then go after the Hydra, seeing as they should be capable of poison.
Minotaur would be annoying to face due to his invulnerability to blunt force, but that was what the blade was for. And Cyclops wasn’t a fighter in the first place.
That would leave Jaeger alone against their leader, whose name he still did not know… and Jaeger disliked that, as warfare was built around information and deception.
Without information on his enemy it would be like fighting blind, something Jaeger was really not looking forward to, but he’d have to strike now… they had a hostage after all…
And when someone stepped out of the bus frowning, Jaeger blinked in surprise at who it was… Aaron Hassan, the middle-eastern kid who he had met a few days ago…
Normally Jaeger would have forgotten meeting one of the many people in Tartarus, but Aaron has stuck out from the group… mostly due to his getup…
It was autumn, heading to winter… and he was in a shorts. And he seemed like a fun guy.
Still, if it was this guy being held hostage, Aaron had a bit of a personal bit to include in here… perhaps he could offer Aaron a position in The Eyes of the Hunter after this?
Jaeger considered his approach… then nodded to himself at his thoughts, thinking that his plan would work.
He just had to hope for now… so with that, he crouched, held his rifle he had been carrying and aiming… then all of a sudden-
“Duck!” the leader shouted and Jaeger widened his eyes as the bullet zoomed past its original target, Empusa’s shoulder…
Yes, despite being ‘The Hunter’ a ruthless Chained killer, Jaeger went for non-lethal first.
Escalation is a thing. As long as he fought like that, it was more likely that, in the case he was defeated; the enemy might spare him in return.
Jaeger quickly stood, dropping the rifle, knowing that reloading it would take too long, as he reached for a special something he got for the occasion…
A Molotov cocktail… fire based explosions were glorious, though in this case Jaeger used it at the centre of their group, taking care to leave Aaron out of it as he jumped down to the ground into a roll.
By the time he landed, the Molotov had dropped and lit the area around them; likely damaging their eyes a bit due to the sudden intensity of the light… it was close to dusk after all.
“It’s him!” Jaeger heard one of the Chained call, but he wasn’t concerned as he stood up from his roll and jumped at Empusa, landing with his hands on her shoulder, allowing him to spin and knee her in the temple…
Chained or no Chained, that was a weak spot. She crumpled to the floor as Jaeger landed, looking for his next target…
Unfortunately, the closest one was the Minotaur… not who he wanted to go for next, but it would have to do, as he ran up to Minotaur, who finally managed to see, as the Chained widened his eyes.
He swung his axe, which Jaeger noticed to be smaller than he heard… then again he was smaller now, but Jaeger dodged by sliding beneath the legs of Minotaur, landing behind him as he jumped… not to reach his back, but for his horns.
Serrated they were, it would have hurt to grab them if Jaeger wasn’t wearing protective equipment… modern gauntlets existed usually for welding and such, but they could be appropriately used in such a situation.
Now with a firm grasp on the horns of the Minotaur, Jaeger spun, using centrifugal force and his weight to topple the Minotaur and flip him onto the floor…
Now the Minotaur is immune to blunt force right? But nothing in creation is truly immune to the laws of physics. Moving the Minotaur was possible, but in his previous size, difficult…
Now that he was roughly 2.2 metres tall, it was easier.
With the Minotaur now flat on his back, coughing out his air from shock, Jaeger brought up a knife from his leg and, cutting through the thick tendons and muscles, disabled Minotaur’s arms making the huge man scream, only for Jaeger to kick his chin…
Another weak spot… damaging the head or brain was an easy equalizer for most people. Considering hitting the temple or chin shook the brain and gave concussions, it was a serious one.
Now with woozy eyes, Jaeger easily flipped the Minotaur… okay, it took some effort because Jaeger wasn’t the biggest of people, and he’d never look like a body-builder, but it was done, and Jaeger severed the tendons in his legs as well.
Minotaur was now out of the fight, and normally Jaeger wouldn’t be so violent with the enemy if he didn’t know that Chained healed hilariously quickly.
Wounds that would cripple a normal human being would heal… it would take a while, but the wounds would heal. If Minotaur survived that is.
Jaeger heard footsteps behind him and saw one of the Hydra siblings running at him, the taller of the two boys, and Jaeger raised his fists waiting for the last step.
When the boy shot out his fist to try and hurt Jaeger, Jaeger leaned back with a smirk… the kid overextended, likely unused to fighting as a human, and Jaeger had his hands snap out and grab the limb.
From there Jaeger did a Judo based throw over the shoulder, and before the boy could try and fight it he had turned him over, placed a foot on his back and with a twist, dislocated the arm, and then kicked the boy in the face.
Three down, four to go… but Jaeger frowned as he noted his situation, only the Hydra siblings that were still conscious were panicking… Cyclops was visibly scared but he might not even fight in that case…
As for their leader, the smaller white haired one that looked to be the youngest, not that Jaeger actually considered looks to be a factor in age, he was calmly watching, though he was in a defensive stance…
And it looked like Aaron ran away… a good thing. Aaron shouldn’t be here for this fight.
The last members of the Hydra ran at Jaeger and he frowned… one on one, he might try for non-lethal. Two on one however, would require a bit more damaging attacks…
With that being thought of, Jaeger removed two collapsible police batons, still suited for non-lethal, but decidedly more painful… plus, works with the arnis/kali/escrima martial art.
So when they rushed Jaeger, and Cyclops looked uncertain, and the leader just watching, Jaeger knew he could afford to fight safe instead of rushing through this fight, so he adopted a defensive stance and began to counter the wild attacks of the sister and brother.
It had been said by Viktor that Jaeger’s fighting style in this manner was annoying, due to him hitting an opponent’s attacking limb just before it reached its hitting point…
Meaning that the attacks would cause damage to the attacker, and they wouldn’t be as strong as they should be even if it got through.
It was easy to brutalize the seemingly softer fighting style though, as the sister came closer and he weaved to the left, smashing one of the batons on her extended elbow and breaking it. When she screamed, he stepped behind her, placing one of the batons on her neck and choked her into unconsciousness, using her as a shield against her brother.
With only the brother left, Jaeger finished him off with an easier combo involving kicking the ankle, then the knee, then slamming the baton against the temple of the enemy, and if they weren’t knocked out, like the smaller brother was now, kick them in the face.
Now it was just Cyclops and the enemy, and the fires of the Molotov were dying out as Jaeger glared at Cyclops.
“Well, Cyclops… I would have thought you would have heeded my warning.” Jaeger growled as he walked closer, forgoing his batons and instead pulling out a saw like blade.
“Well… I was given a brilliant offer… besides, I owe the brat.” Cyclops replied as Jaeger pointed the saw at him.
“So, you’d fight me? Aren’t you scared that you’ll die?” Jaeger asked as Cyclops chuckled, taking a swig of a bottle in his hand, before dropping it.
“Oh, I’m terrified. That’s why I had some liquid courage before I valiantly lose.” Cyclops said easily as he fell into a boxing stance and got closer…
Cyclops was very built from his work, and with the fact that he had robotic arms; Jaeger couldn’t afford to get hit…
Luckily it was only the arms that were like that, and not the other bits.
It was thanks to that knowledge that Jaeger easily moved closer, ducking under the metal right hook coming for his head, countering with a slash to the underarm of Cyclops’s left arm, disconnecting the nerves there…
Again, Chained healed faster than normal, irrespective of Biological or not… though Biological Chained regenerated faster.
With a shout of pain, Cyclops tried to step back, only for Jaeger to step forward, planting his foot on Cyclops’ retreating foot, making him stumble a bit as Jaeger launched a high kick against Cyclops’ temple, crumpling him to the ground.
With that done, Jaeger turned to the leader of the group, who was staring at Jaeger… then he dropped into a Chinese Kung-Fu stance as Jaeger glared at the last one… then put the saw type blade away.
His coat was really helpful; as he sometimes had his weapons stored there block an attack he didn’t see or couldn’t dodge.
“So, who are you, and why were you gathering Chained?” Jaeger glared at the younger looking Chained as he shrugged.
“The name’s Typhon… and I have no idea why we gathered.” Typhon… Jaeger widened his eyes at the name, then looked… no, this boy couldn’t be Typhon.
“Don’t lie to me. You can’t be Typhon… he died like fifteen years ago.” Jaeger claimed and Typhon’s eyes widened as he shouted, something uncharacteristic for him.
“Wait, you know Typhon? You know my father!” he called out as Jaeger widened his eyes… right… for Biological Chained, they could have a child, and the child would usually have the exact same ability…
But… wait, so his son was also named Typhon due to his power? Typhon Senior and Typhon junior apparently, that was a strange notion, but not completely out there.
“No I didn’t… I had heard of him though. A wandering hermit type of Chained that just roamed Tartarus, searching for something…” Jaeger claimed as Typhon’s fists clenched into a claw-like shape.
“Well… I guess I’ll just get my answers from you after I beat you.” Jaeger scoffed at the confidence of the younger Chained as he reached to his back.
And from Jaeger’s back, he drew the standard long sword given to him by Viktor, and he reached to his side, pulling out a flint-lock pistol… he had more, but he usually only carried two.
“You can try… I’ll show you, humans aren’t weak.” Jaeger growled his most common statement to all the Chained he did battle with, and they charged at each other.
Jaeger was quick to be surprised when one of the black bracelets Typhon had shot out a blur at him, as he leaned back dodging the upward swipe he noted it to be a chain…
A Chained using chains as a weapon was kind of ironic actually.
He didn’t have much time to focus on it as another shot appeared and he spun, Typhon thinking he’d have a chance to attack only to hear a tiny click and then he had to step to the side as a bullet zoomed past his face.
“Well… a hole in my jacket, but that move was worth it.” Jaeger smirked as he leaned down, picking up the cowboy hat he had dropped when the fight started… really, it wasn’t glued to his head or something…
But he placed it on his head, loving the classic feel as he took a pellet from a pocket on his side; reloading the gun… it had enough gunpowder, but only for three shots… annoyingly…
His grandfather worked with one shot, so he couldn’t complain though.
“…You almost got me… I’m stronger though.” Typhon stated with his sure confidence in his strength and Jaeger smirked as he tilted his hat down for a bit to hide his eyes…
Jaeger, for all that he was a pretty casual guy when not on the job, was a mean-spirited guy at times… his favourite pass time was proving common sense wrong… after all, what ‘normal’ human could defeat the closest the modern world had to mythological monsters?
So hearing Typhon state he was stronger? That statement just made Jaeger want to knock him down more.
“Oh that’s fine… I don’t need to be stronger to win.” Typhon narrowed his eyes, and Jaeger noticed a strange sense of familiarity in them… he had heard something similar before.
Jaeger didn’t think much on it as he surprised Typhon by doing something no sane person would do…
He threw his pistol upwards, while running towards Typhon who widened his eyes, and when the sword came for him, Typhon was quick to swing his hands, now covered in the same black material as his chains and clawed, to block…
Then Typhon felt something touching his chest and had only a moment to glance down and see a longer gun… and judging by the width of the barrel…
With a boom, Typhon was sent flying back and Jaeger flipped the gun back, catching the pistol as he chased after Typhon, who was coughing blood and bleeding from the chest…
Capable of getting hit by turret rounds as he was, even Typhon couldn’t handle a trench-gun at close range…
Each Hunter was subsequently stronger and better than the previous Hunter. This was the belief most Chained who knew the truth of them had… but in truth, Jaeger didn’t believe it.
He knew for a fact that his father was stronger than him, and his grandfather was even stronger than his father… yet, Jaeger had almost as many kills as his grandfather.
The reasoning was technological advancement. Just because they were limited to older weaponry, didn’t mean they didn’t learn new methods or try new things…
The trench-gun was his own design, and Viktor and their gun-smiths, which were very few since the idea of making a gun was dangerous after all, had made it for him.
Typhon coughed up some blood and tried to stand, and when Jaeger stepped forward, swung his arm, a battle-axe appearing but…
Typhon wasn’t a weapon user in the first place. It was a mistake of him to try and beat Jaeger at his own game, and Typhon paid the price when the sword Jaeger held in his right hand at the ‘handle’ of the axe, knocking it back.
In that gap of time, Typhon tried to jump back, assisted by his Nano-bots making his feet digitigrade and swung a chain out, Jaeger dodged once more but was surprised when a chain shot out of the anklet, hitting Jaeger in the chest and forcing him back…
Painful, and he was wheezing… probably cracked a rib or two, but he’d live, the chain hadn’t been moving at a fast speed due to Typhon standing still.
Still, Jaeger powered through the pain and moved closer, knowing Typhon to be fast enough to dodge a clearly aimed shot, so he’d need to shoot from near point-blank… besides, the shotgun should have eviscerated Typhon, not give him a lot of light wounds and knock his breath out…
So yeah, point-blank was the only one that really hurt Typhon, and even then it seemed the blunt force from the attacks did more damage… Jaeger wished he had armour piercing rounds.
Typhon wasn’t able to catch his breath though as he swung a claw at Jaeger, who blocked with the sword and shot Typhon’s arm at the elbow, forcing a grunt of pain from the usually quieter Chained as said elbow either cracked or broke.
The attack of Typhon was followed through with an upward thrust, this one clipping Jaeger as he fell back, into a kick to the stomach when Typhon stepped forward.
The kick was blocked, but Typhon now had a useless left arm, and considering that was his dominant arm, it was quite annoying, so Jaeger sought to take advantage by attacking from the left…
That was negated by Typhon being proficient at both Muay Thai and Tae-kwon-do… the Cradle is there to teach things after all.
So using his legs and his off-handed right arm, he fought back, but was knocked to the floor when Jaeger pulled out another combo from somewhere, this time tripping Typhon by catching his leg on the upward kick, then kicking his balancing leg in, making Typhon tumble as Jaeger held his pistol just slightly away from Typhon’s head.
The fight was over… and Jaeger had won. He breathed heavily in that revelation and the feeling of after combat fatigue setting in… he had defeated quite a few Chained today… now to play executioner.
“You know, it didn’t have to be this way… if you had just lived quietly, you wouldn’t have had to fight me… and if you hadn’t tried having a hostage too.” Typhon’s eyes widened as he smirked at Jaeger, who raised an eyebrow in questioning.
“Did you know, Hunter, that Jaeger is the German word for hunter? Your parents named you after what you would be.” Typhon added and Jaeger blinked at the strangeness of the information.
“And I’m no hostage man!” Jaeger’s eyes widened as he attempted to turn, only to get knocked out by a blow to the skull, much like he had knocked out the other Chained… saddest part, was that it was from the stock of the rifle he had dropped when the fight started… and it was Aaron doing the knocking out.
See, Jaeger had rushed ahead to ‘save’ Aaron, but he was unaware that Aaron was actually the leader of the group… lack of information is a problem after all.
“Now Typhon, get up, get the guys, and let’s go, I don’t want to be around when Jaeger wakes up.” Aaron added and Typhon rolled his eyes, wincing as he stood, holding his damaged arm… would probably be fine in a few hours.
He healed faster than other Chained of the Biological nature, which was strange but welcome.
With nary a complaint, Typhon moved the others with Aaron’s assistance, and Aaron started the bus and left…
Jaeger would wake up an hour later with a massive headache and three new bits of information that he hated.
One, Aaron wasn’t a hostage… he was with the group. His ranking in the group, Jaeger didn’t know, but he was with them… maybe the group wasn’t that bad, but a gathering of Chained in that size scared others.
Two, Typhon was the strongest Chained in that group, and Jaeger knew he could beat him in one on one combat now, but in the whole group, he might lose… plus, he had no doubt that Typhon would be stronger the next time they fought.
And three, Jaeger now hated the German language.