Commander Daizo had been missing for over an entire week. At first, the NPA had chalked it up to him not wanting them to bungle his investigation, since it was usual of the man to do things alone, and he had the sanction to do so. However, after the Commisioner General tried to call his personal number (the one they only called when they thought they needed his help) only for Daizo to not pick it up. Again, this was not of concern the first days, but it became one after they repeatedly called him and got nothing.
Two days after the attempts, the Agency sent units to the last known locations of the commander, hoping that he was merely busy with his assignation, and not worse.
Their lack of sucess after scouring alleys, bars, houses and other such places made them realize the truth: Uehara Daizo had disappeared, and they had no idead of where to.
Four days after that, when it became clear that Daizo was nowhere to be found, the National Diet decided to call a meeting in order to organize a search, asking for the attendance of the Prime Minister himself given the importance of the issue.
And then, just as the meeting was about to commence, a blue vortex (one most of them knew of... and dreaded of seeing in person) opened right in the middle of the room with a loud blast, and after several moments of silence and bewilderment, three figures walked out of it.
The first one was a young woman, who couldn't be older than twenty five. At first sight, she seemed to be a normal girl all things given, despite wearing a fur cape of all things and carrying a small sword from her hip, but a closer look revealed her pointed ears and narrow irises. It was clear she was nervous by the rapid glances she sent to those around her, but otherwise she stood firm.
The second was a tall, well-built man, garbed from head to toe in greek armor with a small, straight-bladed sword hanging from his hip. Unlike the woman, he was anything but uneasy, glaring at everyone and occasionally at the third member of the trio, obviously watching for any threat that could come up.
The last one was Doom Slayer himself... dragging the mangled, naked body of commander Uehara Daizo across the tiles of the room, his blood dirtying the tiles.
The moment they realized what was going on everyone in the hall exploded, several guards rushing in and aiming their weapons at the trio. The young ones unseathed their blades, and it was clear that the man was more than willing to fight them, but the soldier from the alternate future ignored the guns aimed at him and threw the commander at the center of the room, before facing the Prime Minister and giving a bow of greeting.
"Your Excellency" He said.", I have come here to ask you to execute this... monster."
The head of state, not only not as agitated as the others but also wondering several things (among them how did Daizo end up like that, who were the two accompanying him, and chiefest of them all, why did the soldier call the inspector a monster of all things), decided to give him a chance to at least explain himself.
"Under what charges, mister Slayer?"
Rather than reply directly to the Minister, Doom Slayer fickled with his armor before projecting a hologram in the middle of the hall for all to see. Said hologram, recorded through Slayer's helmet given the presence of a Head-up display, showed a black, mystical location at first, but then focused on some kind of, for lack of a better term, tear in the time-space veil.
The first thing they saw was a man painting a beautiful woman on a canvas. It would have been nothing out of the blue, if not for the fact that said man looked exactly like Commander Daizo, if at least a decade younger, and wearing garbs from several hundred years before.
"This" Slayer Began to say. ", is the origin of Daizo."
They saw as the younger Uehara drew a circle with a square in the floor of his house, placing several candles of different colouring on smaller circles around the main one.
Daizo, after litting the candles, began to chant in an unintelligible language. The room he was in acquired a black coloration, and wax from the candles began to melt... and move towards Daizo, as if guided by an unseen force. Before reaching him, the small rivers of ink rose from the floor and took the forms of humanoid creatures.
Some in the council, the ones that dealt with things like metahumans, magic and the supernatural recognized what was happening: that was a black magic ritual, the kind of magic that only worked by dealing with evil spirits, binding the summoner to their will, gifting them with power and inhuman abilities, but at the cost of their souls.
However, when the ink spirits entered Daizo's body through his eyes, ear and mouth, nothing happened. There was an unholy screeching coming from unseen throats, and Daizo grit his teeth as if exterting himself, but then the smiled and stood up as the sounds died off, even dusting himself in a victorious manner.
Uehara Daizo had just defied evil spirits with nothing but sheer grit and determination.
The amazement of seeing Daizo bend the spirits with his iron will faded as they saw, several minutes later according to the HUD, as Daizo attacked a carriage and killed everyone inside (guards, servants, even children) with nothing but his bare hands to test his newfound ability.
Huge, clawed hands made of ink, that is.
The following images were just as bad, if not worse, seeing Daizo rob, murder, trick, blackmail and otherwise being a monster throughout the centuries, either by himself or through monsters he made from his body. How did his crimes evade their predecessors, they didn't know, but then again, lots of things could be done when your body secreted magical ink. Even the more advanced weapons of the ninetee and twentieth didn't do anything more than attract his attention, and inspire him into making his own gun-toting constructs.
After that they watched as Daizo joined the police force in the late seventies, raising rapidly through its ranks until becoming an inspector: many of the 'villains' he fought he had made himself, but at least Nya-Nya, Saico-Tek and Scarface were real beings, not ink constructs. No one had any idea of why Doom Slayer was showing them this, aside to prove that, indeed, Daizo was a criminal.
At least until they saw what came after, which proved that Daizo was a monster.
"Now, I shall show you the reason the... 'commander'" Doom Slayer said in a contemptuous tone as he gestured at the moaning form of Daizo. ", is in such state. I must warn you, though, the images you are about to see are not for the faint of heart."
"What could be worse than seeing a man slaughter hundreds of people in cold blood?!" One of the councilors screamed at him.
Doom Slayer merely glanced at the woman's general direction, causing her to pale and yelp in fear, before proceeding further with the recording.
The attendees would later wish they hadn't watched the rest of the recording.
They watched a girl being caught, then eaten alive by a horde of rotting corpses, some of which had black ichor dripping from openings in their bodies, as Daizo observed the act from several yards behind with an intense stare.
They watched a group of young adults scream in agony as a robed, pale-skinned old man electrocuted them, cackling as he did so, until there was nothing left of them but ashes, with Daizo standing next to the man, a lit cigarette on his mouth.
They watched an skeleton-like, red-eyed robot thrust its arm through a man's chest, ripping his heart out and catching it with its hand. Again, Daizo watched on, this time with a smirk of excitement on his face.
Finally, they saw as a pack of monstrous, red-eyed wolves the size of small cars tore into a family of three. And another, and one more. It was obvious by that point that the man-eating wolves were just.
Fortunately Doom Slayer only showed them those four, but something told them that these were just three of many, many more grisly murders Daizo had committed.
Apparently, the inspector became fond of foreign films and shows when these began being shown in Nippon, to the point of making the monsters and villains of said works real through his powers, for no real reason except that he liked to see them. They knew he was an eccentric man to be sure (mainly a womanized whose smile never faltered and whose eyes never opened beyond a squint), but to have such strange and morbid fetish?
What would have been laughable, even amusing in any other occasion was utterfly horrifying in the current situation... and enraging. After all, it wasn't everyday you found the hard way that the greatest and best of Japan's heroes was actually a monster.
One they had unwittingly helped, because everyone they saw him kill they recognized as several 'criminals' he had been 'forced' to kill for one reason or another, accused of crimes worthy of the death sentence.
Or at least, he had fooled them into believing so.
Then, they saw an army literally out of a fantasy book fight the greek warrior, who was eventually overwhelmed by the creatures.
Finally, they saw Doom Slayer fighting against a Daizo after he created a gigantic ink monster to fight the soldier, said giant being attacked by the armor-clad man and the woman, and finally the real Daizo being ripped out of the monster.
By the time Doom Slayer was finished with the recording, some were crying, either out of sheer fear or the fact they were the reason he had, others too shocked to do anything except stare, and the rest shouting and yelling. Of those, many accused Doom Slayer of fabricating the images they just saw, but just as many clamored for the creature he had brought to be killed right there and then. They understood why Slayer didn't kill Daizo before bringing him there and explaining himself, but surely he could have done so in a different manner?
Doom Slayer's response was simple, blunt, and straight to the point:
"He plagued your people, in your soil. It's your duty to make him pay for that." To be fair, he had done something somewhat similar to those atlantean terrorists.
Then, Doom Slayer asked the pair accompanying him, Ayame and Pausanias were they called, to introduce themselves... and the reasons they were there.
The woman's name was Ayame, and she was a yokai, more specifically (and surprisingly, given the circumstances) a wolf yokai; she even turned into a wolf to show it. After that the yokai began to explain to them why had she come there with Doom Slayer, why was she involved with Daizo.
The yokai extermination order. Just the fact that the recent murders and the 'man-eating dogs' were entirely due to Daizo finding out about it and deciding to take advantage of it to rise in the ranks sent a shiver down the councilors' spines. There were many such orders from before, none of them enforced but many of them involved killing or otherwise brutally punishing the transgressors. The yokai themselves really didn't have problems, since many of them had easily adapted to the changing society.
Or at least those who could pass themselves as humans.
Of course, the only japanese wolves left were those in zoos, and apparently some wolf yokai just couldn't adopt a human form, and not everyone would buy the excuse of them being wolfdogs from Europe. Daizo probably chose to hunt them down for this very same reason, because they'd be easy to track.
The man, Spartan he called himself, was a metahuman from Greece that, after coming to Nippon after being directly inspired by Doom Slayer, and finding out that being a vigilante in a mostly crime-free Tokyo was tedious, had somehow found out about the wolves and their problem, and offered to help them in getting out of the country before it was too late.
If not for Doom Slayer, the warrior would have most definitely been killed by Daizo, alongside the others.
If a man could find out about such ancient and nearly forgotten law, others could. The tribe didn't want retribution, or compensation: they just wanted the order to be so that her people, and others like them, didn't have to fear being hunted down like animals by men like Daizo.
So, in the end, it was decided that Uehara Daizo would be executed, even though the procceedure would take several weeks. The extermination order was also revoked after seeing firsthand the plight Ayame and her tribe went through.
Sadly, parts of the appearance of Doom Slayer and his companions in the National Diet, and their reveal of Daizo's true nature, was later broadcasted across the world... which meant that certain organizations stationed in the United States became interested in the nigh-invincible man-monster.
And they could wait.
Here it is, the end of the Brushogun arc. If you wanted to see Daizo being executed then and there, remember than even in real life those in death row can take years to be proccessed and dispatched, even the worst ones; plus, many just will not believe the truth. Besides, pretty sure many of you are sick tired of this arc... and frankly, I need a rest from it too. If you believe there are things still unresolved, the next chapter will have a quick recap of what happened in the background. Still, you can comment to point out if I'm doing the political part right or at least believable.
If the last paragraphs of the chapter seem rushed to you, they are, both to (again) end the arc and because I'm tired and wanted to upload it.
So, next chapter the SI will visit a certain smithy god after asking a certain question to Pausanias and getting a lead into Raven's possible location. After that, well, I'll see how to continue.
And no, Daizo ain't gonna join the Suicide Squad, or Luthor's paycheck. I'm not going to fall into the 'villain escapes, joins hero's enemies and becomes even more of a threat later' trope. It's just means he dies later.