It was, indeed, a hoplite; no way we could mistake that crested helmet and muscle-ladden bronze cuirass for anything else, wielding a shortsword that he was clearly skilled with alongside a round, wooden shield. As for the man himself, he looked like your archetypical greek hero, tall and well-built (enough to send a several-thousand pound monster flying with a punch) but due to the helmet covering his entire head that was the extent of our knowledge.
"He's an unknown vigilante that began to operate in Tokyo a few weeks after the Red Trident attack." VEGA replied as we watched him fight. "He has yet to speak in public or receive a name, the latter due to his lack of appearances."
"Interesting..." I muttered. Was he related somehow to Themyscira, despite clearly being a man, or was he just some brave soul modeling himself after the greek warriors of the past?
The truth ended up being a mix of both, but at that moment I didn't know it.
On the other side, there were the opponents he was fighting: orcs, goblins, barbarians, ogres, undead of all kinds, even demons... or, as Constantine had put it, the 'bloody Monstrous Manual', which was a very apt description. And they were slowly but surely overwhelming the lone warrior with their sheer numbers: as skilled and strong as he was, there were simply too damn many of them for him.
Then there was the fact they didn't bleed red, but black, and not in the sense that their blood was black, but because instead of the crimson liquid, from their wounds oozed...
"Is that thing coming from that neck ink?" I heard John mutter behind me as the hoplite beheaded an orc. Sure enough, the monster's stump spewed black ichor as it fell, before the entire body, and anything it had on, turned into a man-sized glob of ink. Ditto for the others the soldier killed.
Said globs then reassembled into other monsters that jumped once more into the fray, seemingly fresh unlike the hoplite. Calling the fight 'unfair' would understate it.
"It appears that the horde is some kind of collective paintings turned to life by unknown means, most likely magic of some sorts." VEGA informed.
"Thanks, Brigadier Obvious." John snarked before getting closer to the screen. "Still, he's right about that: those freaks aren't real, in the sense they don't come from Mordor, or Cimmeria, or wherever they're supposed to have come from."
And there were a lot of them,
Brave, but why was this man fighting against an enemy he couldn't beat, instead of retreating to fight another day, aside from simple honor? The fight took place in a forest in Kanto, not a city, and it didn't seem that there were civilians to protect nearby.
At first, that is.
When VEGA panned out the view, we found out why: there was a small group of people spectating the fight from between the trees, most of them wearing a hotchpoth of clothing. What made it strange wasn't their wardrobe, but the the pack of wolves that was with them, some of them larger than the others... and more expressive, given the fear-stricken expressions they had. That said, the people themselves weren't exactly normal either: they seemed human at fist sight, but upon closer inspection they had pointed ears, narrow irises, and fangs, if the ones who had their mouths open were anything to go by.
Oh, and some of them had tails of all things for some reason. The situation was becoming stranger and stranger by the second.
I turned to Constantine since he'd know more about this than me. "Who are they."
"More like what. Yokai, wolf yokai given their looks and the mutts with them, and by their size some of those have to be yokai too. Which is strange by itself, because last time I checked those things lived in zoos."
Quick story lesson that will be relevant in the future: in my original Earth, the japanese wolf had been hunted to extinction by order of the Emperor during the Meiji Revolution. In this one, they managed to survive, but only in captivity.
And then it struck me, the (possible) reason of everything that was happening.
Which turned out to be close, but not to the extent I thought.
The hoplit hade found the wolf yokai pack being chased by the ink monsters, decided to help them, and then found out the hard way that sometimes you can't fight an entire army of nearly unkillable creatures by yourself, at least not without the adequate equipment. As for why weren't the wolves helping him, they probably might have been unable.
"What are these yokai capable of?"
John thought it over. "Not much compared to the others: they can turn into wolves, run much faster than your average athlete, some can get even faster than that, and overall are slightly stronger and tougher than your average human, but not by much. They're actually kinda low on the yokai totem pole."
Then there was the million dollar questions: where did the horde come from, why were they attacking, when did it begin, and who created them.
And then, as the still nameless hoplite lost his shield to the mob, we saw him. The man who had to be the origin of the horde, a jacket wearing, middle aged 'gentleman' who was watching as the hoplite fought from a safe distance... and two storeys above.
Because of his looks and calm demeanor, the man reminded me of the stereotypical japanese detective, with the jacket, the hat, and even the closed eyes. I would have even considered him a noble officer, if not for the glaring fact he was standing atop a demon that could be best described as a blue, non-burning balrog.
And that smile of his... was not a kindly, serene smile, to put it simply.
Not helped by the fact I knew who he was. Still, as it had happened before, I wasn't supposed to know his identity.
"VEGA."
"Uehara Daizo." Also known as the BBEG of Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo, and a parody of inspector Zenigata... and who apparently was also Brushogun himself, instead of merely using the man. "He's a detective from the TMPD, famous for stopping and incarcerating various criminals."
Naturally John scoffed at that. "He probably made those criminals."
"He's not a metahuman if that's what you're wondering. Scans indicate that, as I stated before, he's using magic to generate the creatures."
I turned to John once more. Magic was his field of expertise, after all. "Any idea of who he or it might be?"
John inspected the image of Daizo closely, before grunting. "Dunno, never saw a yokai capable of creating an army of murderous inkblots before, and he doesn't strike me as a wizard with that garb of his. Gotta need some info on him."
I turned back to the screen. "VEGA, anything else of interest that we may use?"
"He has been recently appointed to solve a case about man-eating monsters terrorising the region, and does not like metahumans. He's an otherwise unremarkable individual, that's the extent of my knowledge. I'm sorry."
'Man-eating monsters' that he most definitely made himself, given that some of the ink creatures were essentially wargs. Given who the hoplite was fighting for, it was obvious it was a set-up to eliminate the yokai, but for what reason, we didn't know at the moment.
John took a cigarette and lit it "Say, Slayer, aren't you going to help the lad?" He asked before taking a whiff.
"I will, but first I want to see if the greek recovers." I replied. "Who knows, maybe he's an olympian in disguise."
"I'm afraid he's not, Slayer. He does, however, have a divine signature. From which god, I do not know."
"Well, so much for surprises." John deadpanned.
Eventually, a hit from a axe-wielding barbarian pulled the warrior's helmet off, revealing a young man (could not be older than twenty five) with brown, braided hair and a trimmed beard. Unfortunately, his otherwise handsome features were marred by the profuse bleeding from his mouth. Those ink freaks hit hard despite lacking real bones and muscle mass.
And then, after Daizo jumped down the demon to gloat and was about to execute the hoplite with his pistol when one of the wolf yokai, a young redhead dressed in red clothing and wolf pelts, jumped down the cliff at incredible speed with a sword in hand, screaming at the top of her lungs, and threw several small, green somethings in Daizo's direction. I thought they were shurikens at first, but later I found out they were leaves of all things. Sharp, deadly leaves that could pierce fake orcs... but not Daizo's jacket, it seemed, whose reaction to the attack was akin to someone annoyed at having normal leaves thrown at them, despite the fact it seemed to be just a normal jacket.
The moment she got close enough, the detective pulled a jitte (a kind of japanese batton) out of his jacket and engaged her just as the girl's blade was about to reach his throat.
She was good with the sword, fast enough to become a blur, and powered by righteous anger; the problem was that Daizo was even better with his jitte, much, much better, had a longer reach than her, and possessed inhuman reflexes.
And then he suddenly grabbed the girl's sword by the blade, yanked it from her grip, and punched her hard enough to send her back several yards away. Like any good old villain, he had been merely toying with her.
The wolf girl managed to stop herself from sliding across the dirt, but then the mob of ink monsters fell upon her. However, rather than killing her outright, Daizo made his creatures grab her and force her to watch as the hoplite's beating intensified, now carried on by giant demons and dragons who were kicking the poor bastard towards each other, like some demented match of soccer.
The still-nameless girl began to struggle, to scream at them to let him go, but all she got were the mocking laughs and jeers of the horde. Her peers were watching from above, frozen in fear, both of what was happening and because they knew they were next.
The hero being beaten to death in front of a confident villain, a girl crying as said hero's life was slowly and painflly snuffed out, the villain silently gloating because he was sure of his victory...
That would not stand, not with me.
It was time for a little deus ex machina to save their asses.
"VEGA, open a small portal."
In the form of a weapon capable of burning ink away... and a fragmentation grenade. You'll see why the grenade soon.
..........
Sorry for the lack of length for the chapter; I planned to make it longer, but the draft got so long I ended up deciding to divide it. Well, that and I accidentally deleted that part. So, the non-DC characters have been finally introduced, alongside a baddie from DC that very posibly none of you expected to see.
One thing: none of the characters introduced here are original, although that's a bit obvious with Daizo given he's the main (but twist) villain of Trouble in Tokyo. Guess where the yokai and the hoplite are from.
That said, the monsters are actually from Wizardry, but because the game is basically D&D John's statement is not that far off. It's also very popular in Japan, which is why I made Daizo make them, although the next chapter will reveal they didn't start that way.