Chapter 143: Manhattan Crisis - Part 10
Léonard sat still, unmoving on the old leather chair that creaked under his weight. The temporary command post on Governors Island was dimly lit, its windows smeared with ash and rain, overlooking the faint glow of the monstrous dome looming in the distance, Manhattan devoured by nightmare.
The walls were silent but tense. Every console beeped softly, displaying maps, scans, alerts. Outside, gunships circled in a defensive pattern, and foundation units moved like shadows. Inside the command post, there were only four people: Léonard, O5-6, Graves, and Mei Lin.
An encrypted audio channel buzzed on the central screen.
"So, the assault has successfully breached the dome," said DC Al Fine, his voice clipped, sharp, and far too casual for someone in a battlefield zone. "Our joint units are fully engaged inside now. But I've lost vital signs from several subordinates near the Empire State Building. This damn rain… it's interfering with all my telemetry. One Strike Team is still active inside with a few regular soldiers, but they've taken heavy casualties."
There was a brief pause. Then he added:
"And no one can get close anymore. This fucking cupcake storm and the self-sustaining hellfire can't even douse it. The dome's environment is unstable, and the local Reality Index is so chaotic, it's overheating our anchors."
Léonard leaned forward, elbows on the desk, voice steady.
"My team's taken damage as well. But they're still alive. According to the system, they've reached the 80th floor. Communications are cut off, though. We haven't had radio contact in over fifteen minutes."
"Do we have any idea where the cupcakes are coming from?" asked the leader of the Horizon Initiative, his voice solemn and deeply concerned.
"We suspect it's Hime Akumu," DC replied grimly. "Also known as 'Nightmare Princess'. A confirmed Class-IV reality bender. Wanted by the Coalition. She only attacks using cupcakes, explosive ones, to be clear."
There was a long silence, before Prometheus Labs' CEO finally cut in.
"Wait, wait- you're telling me there's a Class-IV reality bender inside that building right now?!"
"The Strike Force is in danger!"
Léonard didn't even blink. He spoke with calm authority:
"Relax. I'll send a reinforcement unit equipped with upgraded anchors and stabilization packs. For now, we keep the operation moving forward. We're not aborting anything."
DC exhaled loudly on the other end.
"Right. I've got to go.The US President won't stop calling and bitching about the situation over here."
"See you," said the three other leaders in unison, voices overlapping. The channel cut out.
Léonard removed the earpiece and leaned back for a second. He looked toward the long, narrow window. The dome still burned across the Hudson, pulsing with irregular hues of red and purple. The Empire State Building pierced through its upper veil like a bone from torn flesh.
He stared for a while, longer than necessary. He could feel it.
A pressure.
A weight.
Heavy and ancient. It bled through the skyline like a whisper carried by the wind.
Then a voice echoed inside his mind.
"It's not your imagination."
Léonard's eyes widened. He glanced left, then right.
"…Who?"
"It's me. The fragment of the Administrator sealed within you."
He sighed. Not out of fear but out of irritation.
"You could've knocked," he muttered.
"You sense it too, don't you?" the voice continued. "That presence. The pressure. It's not from this world."
Léonard narrowed his eyes toward the dome.
"Do you know what it is, then?"
There was a pause.
"Yes. On that island. I feel the presence of another Supreme Divinity."
His pupils dilated.
"You mean… is it him?"
The voice cut him off immediately.
"No. If it were him, this world would already be cinders."
Another silence.
"It is a different Supreme. One I have not felt in eons."
Léonard slowly released a breath, relief washing over him.
"Good…" he muttered. "…That gives us time."
But his expression darkened. He stood up, grabbing his coat from the hanger beside the table. The coat fell across his shoulders like armor. He turned sharply to Graves, who had been listening in silence, one hand resting on the grip of his sidearm.
"Prepare Resh-1," Léonard ordered, voice cold and unwavering.
"We're moving to the frontline."
Graves gave a single nod.
Mei Lin didn't speak, but her gaze lingered on the dome, lips pressed into a thin line. She stood silently and began readying her kit.
Outside, thunder rolled again. The dome pulsed, and across the radios, there was nothing but static.
---
The smoke hadn't even cleared. Shell casings still rolled on the scorched floor of the Empire State Building. Steam hissed from freshly fired weapons, and the scent of ozone clung thick in the air. Clef stepped forward, blood splattered on his coat, shotgun lowered but not relaxed.
With a smile, he muttered. "The plan worked." He turned his head and barked, "Beta Squad, secure the floor! Alpha, you're with me. We move in five!"
But fate didn't care about plans.
A thunderous blast shattered the ceiling.
BOOM.
Chunks of marble and rebar rained down as a gaping hole yawned above them. And from it-
Cupcakes.
Not dozens. Not hundreds. Thousands.
Each one pink, sparkly, and humming with volatile energy.
Clef's expression dropped instantly.
"GET TO COVER!" he roared, diving behind a crumbling column.
The floor erupted. Fire bloomed in massive pink blossoms. Agents screamed as the sugary bombs exploded mid-air and on contact, instantly vaporizing bodies, tearing limbs, sending men and women crashing against steel beams.
Lina's tendrils burst from her back, dark and gnarled, forming a barrier of raw flesh and bone. They caught a wave of cupcakes mid-explosion, shaking violently under the impact, but holding.
And then she descended.
Hime Akumu.
The Nightmare Princess.
Floating down from the hole in the ceiling like some sugarcoated reaper. Her long black coat fluttered as if underwater. Her hair, laced with streaks of cherry pink, drifted lazily as her feet gently touched the ruined marble.
She smiled, thin, cold, and utterly cruel.
"It's time to die," she whispered.
Cupcakes materialized in both her hands, forming out of thin air with a soft poof, wrapped in glittering foil and topped with little candy skulls. With a flick of her fingers, she launched them like bullets.
The battle began.
Clef sprang from cover, shotgun raised. His first blast tore through the air, only for a floating wall of cupcakes to intercept the slug. They exploded mid-air, shielding Hime from the impact.
Behind him, Irantu and Munru of Tau-5 charged forward, eyes devoid of emotion, rifles raised. Irantu fired a burst of armor-piercing rounds, each aimed precisely at vital points.
But Hime twirled like a dancer. With every step, cupcakes flew from her sleeves and detonated on contact with the floor, forming shockwaves of kinetic force that knocked Munru backward into a pillar.
"Munru, flank left!" shouted Irantu, but-
A cupcake whistled through the air and exploded point-blank on Munru's chest.
His body was torn in half in an instant.
Pieces of armor sprayed across the floor.
Nanku, charging from the right, summoned a grappling hook from her wrist launcher, firing it toward a girder above to gain vertical ground.
She was halfway up when Hime spun and hurled a cupcake like a baseball.
It struck the cable mid-line.
BOOM.
The detonation sent Nanku slamming into a metal beam. Her skull caved in on impact, and her body slumped, hanging loosely.
"Damn it!" Clef cursed, eyes flicking between her movements. "How the hell is she keeping up this tempo?!"
Cupcakes flew in arcs, some bouncing on the ground like landmines before bursting with superheated gas, others homing in with erratic movement like sentient drones.
Lina rushed forward, her arms morphing mid-sprint into elongated, talon-like blades. Her tentacles coiled behind her like serpents, slashing cupcakes out of the air with bursts of steaming blood.
She lunged for Hime's throat.
Hime smiled and raised a hand.
A dome of cupcakes formed around her like a crystalline barrier, one that absorbed Lina's strike and then detonated outward, sending Lina flying back in a spray of purple ichor.
Meanwhile, Beta-777 moved in formation, four thaumaturgists weaving layers of sigils mid-combat.
"Binding weave is active!" shouted the leader. "Suppress her mind!"
A glyph ignited beneath Hime's feet, glowing red and gold.
She paused. Blinked. For a second, she staggered.
Then she laughed.
A dozen cupcakes emerged around her like orbiting satellites and ignited in synchrony.
The blast annihilated the glyph, vaporized one of the Beta-777 operatives, and sent the others sprawling. Screaming, the youngest of them rolled on the floor as her arm burned from magical backlash.
Clef didn't hesitate. He moved in close.
"Say goodnight, sugar queen."
He fired point-blank.
But she caught the shell. With a cupcake.
The cupcake absorbed the slug and exploded, hurling Clef backward with enough force to crack three ribs and rupture his eardrum.
Irantu appeared behind her, silent and precise, swinging his rifle like a club. Hime ducked under the blow and kicked him straight in the chest.
Another cupcake, this one shaped like a teddy bear, burst behind him. The shockwave tore his left arm off at the shoulder and crushed his armor like a tin can.
Onru pounced in next, but-
She was too slow.
A cupcake detonated mid-air and sent half her body spiraling across the room, bisected from the waist.
Her upper half slid to a stop near Clef, still twitching.
"Status," Irantu asked, voice calm despite the carnage.
"Still… functional," Onru rasped.
Screams. Gunfire. Magic and flesh and fire. The entire floor had become a storm of death and sugar.
The surviving GOC operators, desperate to stop her, opened fire with everything they had. Bullets ricocheted off spinning cupcake shields. One man lunged with a grenade-
He exploded.
His body was converted into icing. Icing.
Another thaumaturgist, trembling and wounded, drew his final sigil but before he could finish the last stroke, a cupcake slammed into his chest and popped like a soap bubble, melting him down to bone and hair.
Hime stood in the center of it all.
Not a scratch on her. Her eyes glowed with sadistic joy.
This wasn't just power. This was a massacre.
The acrid scent of scorched sugar and burning flesh filled the air as the battlefield dissolved into chaos.
Hime Akumu stood amidst the ruin, untouchable, her dark eyes gleaming with merciless joy.
Clef staggered to his feet, ribs shattered but spirit unyielding. He spat blood and grit, shotgun trembling in his hands. "You're gonna pay for this."
Lina's tendrils flickered, wounds torn open but unhealed, her eyes burning with the fire of a cornered predator. Her body was a storm of movement, swift, deadly, desperate.
Irantu's breath came in ragged gasps, half his left side destroyed, the jagged stump of his arm twitching uselessly. Yet his will remained ironclad as he steadied his rifle, firing blind bursts of bullets, each a prayer for survival.
Onru's battered form barely clung to consciousness, blood pooling beneath her as she struggled to rise, her body split in two but spirit unwilling to surrender.
Between them stood the last Beta-777 thaumaturgist, trembling but resolute, her hands glowing faintly with desperate wards and incantations that flickered like dying stars.
Hime's hands moved in a dance of destruction. Cupcakes appeared out of thin air, pink, glittering, grotesquely innocent in appearance but deadly beyond reckoning. With terrifying precision, she hurled them.
Explosions blossomed like deadly flowers, sending shards of sugar and bone flying.
Irantu was the first to fall under the onslaught.
A cupcake spiraled in an unpredictable arc, striking his leg. The blast tore flesh and bone, shattering what was left of his shattered form.
He collapsed with a strangled gasp, but still managed a bitter smile. "Worth it."
Onru pushed upward, blood pouring like a river from her severed half, crawling desperately toward Hime.
She responded with cruel swiftness, an elongated cupcake darted from her palm like a spear, impaling her through the chest.
Her breath hitched, and then she went still.
Clef and Lina closed ranks, moving in tandem.
Clef fired point-blank, pellets tearing into Hime's shield.
The cupcake barrier shattered in crystalline shards, but Hime's response was immediate.
She tossed a volley of cupcakes that detonated mid-air, sending Clef sprawling into a shattered wall.
Lina screamed in fury and pain, slashing with her razor tendrils.
But every strike was blocked, absorbed, or met with deadly explosions.
A GOC thaumaturgist screamed a final binding incantation, glowing runes flashing beneath Hime's feet.
For a heartbeat, the battlefield stilled.
Then the glyph shattered like glass.
The thaumaturgist's robes ignited; she was consumed in flame and shattered sugar, collapsing to the ground, barely moving.
Clef wiped blood from his mouth, staring down at the ruin of his allies.
He racked the pump. Two shells left in the tube. He didn't look at Lina, he heard her breathing, wet and animal, behind him, and that was enough.
Hime stepped through drifting smoke, every inch of her untouched, the floor around her glittering with molten sugar and shattered bone. A lazy flick of her wrist and three cupcakes spun into the air, orbiting her head like playful, murderous planets.
Clef moved first, low, fast, broken ribs screaming but speed was all he had. He fired. The blast tore the air, slammed against a spinning cupcake-shield and detonated it in a shower of pink fire. The concussive force threw him back a half-step.
Hime smiled.
Lina hit her from the side like a launched spear. Two tentacles slammed forward, jagged bone-tips seeking throat and heart. Hime pivoted, almost casual, and let one tentacle impale a cupcake. It detonated point-blank, Lina's limb vanished in a spray of black-red meat.
She didn't scream. She compensated, another tentacle lashed, a bone blade on the end whistling. It carved a line across Hime's coat, tearing fabric, drawing the first thin line of blood across the Nightmare Princess's ribs.
Hime's eyes narrowed.
A ring of cupcakes blinked into existence around Lina and detonated simultaneously. The shockwave folded her in midair and hurled her into a concrete column. The pillar cracked. Lina slid down it, coughing blood, half her chest flayed open and pulsing.
Clef fired again, last shell. The recoil tore lightning through his torn muscles. Hime's head snapped to the side; frosting shards sliced her cheek. She paused, not hurt, just irritated and tossed a cupcake overhand.
He dove. It blew apart the desk he'd aimed for, flinging splinters and molten sugar into his back. He hit the ground hard, vision flashing black. He forced himself up, hands shaking, fumbling at the bandolier for more shells. Two. Maybe three. His fingers wouldn't count straight.
Hime walked toward him. No rush. No fear. She threw a cupcake lazily; it bounced once, twice, he kicked it away on instinct. It detonated in the air, heat licking his face, blistering his lips.
"Still alive?" she asked, genuinely curious.
He shoved a shell into the tube, pumped, raised, fired, too slow. A cupcake met the muzzle mid-blast and erupted. The backwash lit the air a violent pink. The shotgun flew from his hands, skittering across the floor. His palms ripped open. He staggered, blind, ears ringing.
Lina slammed into Hime's back. Her remaining tentacles wrapped tight, constricting, bone-hooks digging in. Her free hand, reshaped into a serrated marrow-knife drove toward Hime's spine.
Cupcakes formed under Hime's skin. They burst outward in jagged petals, like blooming sugar roses made of shrapnel. The eruption shredded Lina's tendrils, blew holes through her torso, and sent her tumbling in a spray of cartilage and vaporized blood.
Hime turned and kicked her in the face. Bone cracked. Lina rolled, stopped, shuddering then forced herself upright again, teeth bared, limbs reknitting on instinct even as anti-thaumic heat tried to keep them from closing.
"Persistent," Hime said. "Annoying."
Clef staggered toward his shotgun, every step a knife in his side. Hime didn't even look at him. Three cupcakes leapt from her hand and arced like mortar shells. He flattened an instant before detonation, one went off overhead, raining molten sugar that fused to his coat and skin; another slammed the ground beside him and flipped him like a ragdoll.
He landed beside Onru's upper half. The twitching had stopped. The eyes were glass.
He grabbed the shotgun.
He chambered shells in it.
He stood up.
"Come on," he rasped, voice shredded. "Focus on me."
Hime obliged.
She launched a rapid-fire volley, small cupcakes, fast as bullets, exploding on contact. Clef sprinted, zigzagging behind ruined desks and pillars, using every beat of cover he could find. Each explosion shoved him sideways, slapped him with heat and frosting shrapnel, but he kept moving, kept stepping into the narrow gap between impacts, refusing to drop.
He dove behind a half-melted support beam, lungs on fire. Lina appeared on Hime's left, faster than she should have been capable, she'd ripped the tendons in her legs free from their sockets and re-strung them tighter, trading agony for speed. She slammed her reformed bone-blade down.
Hime blocked with a cupcake shield and Lina's blade cut through it. The impact tore Hime's arm backward, forcing her to slide a meter, heels digging grooves into the floor.
Hime's smile vanished.
A wall of cupcakes erupted between them, Lina plunged straight through it. The resulting explosion sent both of them cartwheeling. Lina broke the landing with her forearms, they snapped. She rolled, reset them with a sickening twist, and charged again.
Clef burst out from cover at the same time, sprinting full force. He closed inside her orbital pattern, the one-two-three keepsake timing she'd repeated unconsciously since the start of the fight, close enough that she couldn't arc a cupcake without risking self-detonation at full yield.
He shoved the barrel of the shotgun toward her chest. She caught it. He pulled the trigger anyway.
The blast tore the weapon in half. The recoil broke his hand. The shell detonated between them, enough to throw them both apart.
Hime hit the ground, rolled, rose, bleeding this time, more than a scratch, bright red splattering her collarbone. Her eyes flashed cold fury.
Clef couldn't stand. Not properly. One knee buckled; the other barely held. He dragged himself up on a cracked steel strut, vision tunneling, heartbeat a pounding, irregular drum.
Lina landed beside him, swaying, an open hole where part of her abdomen should've been. She breathed in ragged, wet bursts. Her tendrils reformed in quivering spines.
They stood shoulder to shoulder.
Hime lifted both hands.
The room filled with cupcakes, hundreds, blinking softly, humming with low, murderous energy.
Clef exhaled. "When I move," he whispered.
Lina nodded, eyes never leaving Hime.
Hime closed her fingers.
The cupcakes screamed.
They fired.
Clef moved first, sideways, low, fast, grabbing a fallen riot shield from a dead GOC operative, barely raising it in time. The first volley obliterated it, ripped it from his hands and tossed him like a weightless thing.
Lina charged straight through the fire, letting it take her apart, knowing she'd stitch back together if there was anything left to stitch. She crossed ten meters in a heartbeat, landed a slash across Hime's face that carved a groove from cheek to ear-
-and Hime headbutted her.
The crack of skull on skull echoed like a gunshot.
Lina staggered.
Hime's hand snapped out, grabbed one of Lina's tentacles, and tore it off.
Lina hissed. Another tentacle punched through Hime's thigh in retaliation, exploding bone-fragments from the other side.
Both women collapsed, rolling, black ichor and bright red blood spattering across the burned marble.
Clef crawled, vision doubled, toward the last thing that could still be used as a weapon: a bent length of rebar, slick with gore. He grabbed it, forced himself up, staggered forward.
Hime stood first.
She hurled a cupcake the size of a bowling ball. Clef threw himself left; it detonated mid-flight, and the blast hurled him right back into her path.
She planted a heel on his chest and leaned, pinning him down. Her eyes glowed. Another cupcake formed at her fingertips, tiny, delicate, pulsing.
"This one's just for you."
She didn't get to throw it.
From behind her, through dust, smoke, the crackle of still-burning sigils, a charred silhouette dragged itself upright. The last Beta-777 thaumaturgist. Skin blackened, armor fused to muscle, one arm missing, the other trembling with useless twitching.
His remaining hand clenched.
A sphere of raw, unstable energy ignited in his fist, too bright, too wild, the kind of spell you cast when you know you won't live to see what it does.
He didn't scream. He didn't warn. He just swung.
The fist connected with Hime's back.
The detonation was instant, blue-white and violent. The shockwave tore Hime off Clef and flung her across the floor, through a cracked support column, into a pile of fractured concrete and rebar. Cupcakes winked out, falling inert like dead birds.
The thaumaturgist collapsed where he stood. His arm disintegrated mid-fall; the rest of him followed, crumbling into a heap of black ash and cooling light.
Silence.
Clef rolled onto his side, coughing blood, lungs burning with every inhale. Lina, shaking, propped herself up on jagged bone. Across the ruined floor, rubble shifted.
Hime wasn't dead.
Not yet.
The fight wasn't over.
Not even close.
Suddenly, a portal tore open beside Hime, rippling through the air like a wound in reality itself.
From the swirling darkness stepped a man clad in a long black coat. His face was obscured, partly by the low brim of a dark fedora, and partly by a black bandana wrapped tightly around his lower face. His presence was suffocating. Silent. Absolute.
Hime turned toward him. The madness in her eyes flickered, faded. She gazed up at him with something dangerously close to reverence.
"Sir…" she whispered.
The man looked down at her and sighed, deep and tired.
Without a word, he stepped forward and gently lifted her into his arms, cradling her like she weighed nothing.
Then he raised his eyes to Clef and Lina.
Everything froze.
Lina's breath caught. Her body trembled. Every cell screamed at her to run, to hide, to vanish. That gaze, it wasn't human. It was ancient. Predatory. Like the universe itself had birthed a hunter, and he'd found his prey.
Clef felt it too. His hands twitched at his sides.
The man's voice was cold, detached.
"I see you've taken good care of my subordinate."
He raised his free hand.
In the center of his palm, an orb of energy began to form, dense and quiet, black at its core, with twisting arcs of crackling white light orbiting like chained lightning. The air screamed around it.
"Allow me to return the favor."
"COVER!" Clef shouted, grabbing Lina and diving behind the broken remains of a steel beam.
The man released the orb.
A soundless flash.
Then-
Impact.
A blinding explosion consumed the entire floor. White-hot fury vaporized concrete and steel, reduced walls to dust, shattered reinforced columns like glass. The shockwave carved through the building like divine wrath, blowing through what remained of the 80th floor with obliterating force.
Silence followed.
A deep, ringing silence, broken only by the crumbling echoes of what had once been.
The man, unfazed by the chaos erupting around him, turned his gaze toward the direction where Clef and Lina had fled.
His expression remained unreadable beneath the shadow of his fedora, calm amid the devastation.
Then, without warning, the same portal behind him rippled once more and eight masked commandos stepped through.
They wore black tactical gear, faces concealed behind matte hoods marked with the insignia of the Chaos Insurgency. Silent. Precise. Ready.
Without sparing them even a glance, the man spoke coldly:
"Eliminate the remaining insects."
The squad leader raised a clenched fist to his chest and bowed slightly. "Yes, Sir."
He made a quick hand gesture.
The team split into formation, rifles up, moving with deadly coordination toward the scorched ruin where Clef and Lina had taken cover.
The man gave one last glance at the shattered floor, then looked down at the unconscious girl in his arms.
Still holding her gently, he turned and stepped back into the swirling portal.
The fabric of reality folded in around him-
And with a low hum, the portal sealed shut behind them.
Suddenly, gunfire exploded across the hallway.
A Nu-7 operator landed from the ceiling with a crash, shotgun already firing. The first Chaos Insurgent dropped. Then the second. Then two more. Shells tore through body armor like paper.
"FUCK!" one of the commandos yelled.
Too late.
The operator moved like death itself. Inhumanly fast. Brutal. Precise.
One insurgent raised his rifle, headshot.
Another ran, double tap to the back.
A final scream. Silence.
The floor was painted in blood.
Smoke cleared.
The operator stood in the middle of the corpses, calm. Around his neck: a silver amulet, glowing faintly red. Thirteen diamonds. One central ruby.
Clef narrowed his eyes. "No fucking way."
Lina stared. "Who… who is that?"
The man turned around, pulled off his helmet.
Smirk.
"Yo," he said.
Clef scowled. "Coward. You hid during the whole damn fight again?"
"Did I?" the man replied, voice playful. "Looks to me like I just saved your sorry asses."
Lina blinked. "Wait… That's…?"
Clef spat blood and sighed. "Yeah. That's Dr. Jack Bright. SCP-963."
Lina frowned. "He just… possessed that guy?"
"Pretty much," Clef grunted. "He's the fuckin' amulet. Anyone who wears it becomes him."
Bright looked around. "Damn. Y'all made a mess."
"We were getting torn apart!" Clef shouted. "Where the hell were you?"
"Busy," Bright shrugged. "Had to find a suitable body."
Clef growled. "You always pull this shit. Always show up after the carnage."
Bright smiled. "I like dramatic entrances."
Lina stepped forward. "You let people die."
Bright's eyes narrowed. "And I stopped these bastards. You're welcome."
"You could've come earlier!" she snapped.
"I could've," Bright replied. "But then I wouldn't have this body. And trust me, Nu-7 builds them strong."
Clef rolled his eyes. "God, I hate when you talk like that."
"Yet here we are," Bright said. "Alive. Well, mostly."
Lina stared at him, shaken. "You're… insane."
Bright winked. "Occupational hazard."
They stood in the middle of the wreckage.
Then Clef turned away. "Come on. We're not done yet."
Bright followed, shotgun resting on his shoulder. "Lead the way, coward."
Clef didn't even look back. "Better a coward than a haunted necklace."
Bright grinned.
"Touché."
They climbed the stairs.
Dust. Blood. Echoes of gunfire behind them.
Ahead, a massive open hall.
Bright blinked. "What the-"
Rows of crates. Weapons. Field medics. Radio operators. Stacked gear. Chaos Insurgency uniforms everywhere. Over fifty people, maybe more. Some resting. Some cleaning weapons. Others smoking, laughing. None of them expecting a fight.
Clef's eyes scanned the room. He smirked.
Bright whistled. "Nice hideout. What's the plan?"
Clef cocked his shotgun, stealed from Bright's hands.
"The plan," he said, grinning like a devil, "is to kick them in the fucking balls."
Then-
BOOM.
Clef's boot smashed the double door open.
He stepped into the light, shotgun aimed.
"TIME FOR WAR CRIMES, BITCH!" he screamed.
Bright laughed. Lina turned her hands into blades.
A second of silence.
Then chaos.
A radio operator dropped his headset.
"INTRUDERS!"
Clef didn't wait.
He fired.
KA-CHUNK. BLAM.
The shot hit a crate marked "7.62mm." It exploded in a wave of fire and shrapnel. Three insurgents were ripped apart instantly. A fourth staggered backward, face torn open.
Screams filled the air.
Lina was already moving. Her blades sang through a squad before they could lift their rifles. Blood sprayed across a map table.
Bright raised a rifle he looted from the corpse downstairs. "Showtime."
He fired three bursts.
One to the sniper tower, headshot.
One to the medic, spine shot.
One to the logistics tech, clean through the throat.
Clef dove behind cover, reloaded in a blink, and popped up. "You fuckin' clowns call this a military base?"
BLAM. BLAM.
Two heads exploded.
Someone tried to run.
Clef threw a grenade without looking.
"Catch this, coward!"
BOOM.
The runner vanished in red mist.
Lina ducked under a hail of bullets, slid between two crates, and gutted a pair of insurgents who were screaming into radios. She pulled the pins on their belts as she rolled away.
KA-THOOM.
Bright laughed. "Now that's art."
A heavy gunner opened up on them.
Clef sprinted forward, diving between crates, yelling: "YOU CALL THAT SUPPRESSIVE FIRE? I'VE SEEN WET FARTS DO MORE DAMAGE."
He reached the gunner, rammed the shotgun into his chest, and fired at point blank.
The man exploded.
Lina vaulted over the mess and landed on the table in the middle of the room. All eyes turned to her.
Too late.
She spun, blades out, carving throats and faces.
Someone screamed orders, "Fall back! Regroup-"
Bright sniped him mid-sentence.
The back wall painted red.
They kept coming. Fighters, engineers, techs, runners, none spared.
Clef kicked over a server rack and used it as a ramp to jump over sandbags. He landed in the middle of a squad.
"HELLO, DUMBASSES!"
BLAM. BLAM. BLAM.
They dropped like rag dolls.
"Bet you fuckers didn't expect a Clef Bomb today."
Bright strolled in, calm, reloading casually, gunning down those crawling away.
"Y'know," he said, "you'd think by now the Chaos Insurgency would learn to post actual guards."
A medic pleaded for mercy. Bright shot him in the face.
Lina didn't flinch.
She gutted the last rifleman with a twist.
Now just one left.
A technician, cowering behind a flipped table, radio in hand.
Clef walked up slowly. "Whatcha doin', buddy?"
The man shook. "I- I surrender-"
BLAM.
The shotgun barked one last time.
Silence.
Only blood, fire, and smoke remained.
Over fifty bodies, all in pieces or burning. Ammo cooking off. Papers flying. Radios crackling with dead voices.
Clef cracked his neck. "Now that's therapy."
Bright holstered his rifle. "I give it a solid nine outta ten."
Lina turned her hands back. "Are we done?"
Clef grinned, pulling a cigar from his vest.
"Nah," he said, lighting it on a burning helmet. "We're just getting started."
Bright looked around the ruined hall, stepping over burning wreckage and crushed limbs.
"We should destroy all this shit. Can't leave it for scavengers."
Clef, already digging through the scattered crates, cackled. "Destroy it? Hell no."
He pulled out a box of high-yield demolition charges, two bricks of plastique, and something that looked suspiciously like a tactical nuke.
"I'm stealing it first."
He shoved the gear into his duffel, tossed a grenade over his shoulder like seasoning, and strolled toward the stairwell.
BOOM.
The entire floor shook. Fire burst through the stairwell behind them. The whole level groaned under the weight of its own destruction.
"Oops," Clef said, not sounding sorry at all. "Slipped."
They climbed higher, skipping steps two at a time, until they reached the 86th floor.
The observatory.
Glass walls on all sides revealed the horror below, streets burning, demons screaming, joint Foundation/GOC/Horizon Initiative forces fighting with demons, chaos tearing through Manhattan like a living thing.
Two figures were inside.
Hime. Slumped against the far wall, blood on her side, barely conscious. Her breaths were shallow. A trail of red marked her path across the floor.
And the man.
The same man who had saved her.
Standing by the glass wall.
His coat whipped in the wind from the broken windows. He didn't turn. He was watching the city, hands behind his back, like a general observing a battlefield he had orchestrated.
Clef squinted. "Well, well, well…"
He stepped into the room, blood-slick boots echoing on the marble.
"…if it isn't the motherfucker with the dramatic timing."
He lowered his shotgun.
Then, with that same wicked smile:
"Hope you brought a monologue, asshole, 'cause I brought explosives."