Saying that the attack was unexpected would be understating it: no one before had actually managed to send a shot through a Doom Slayer's portal, not even the man himself.
Pretty sure that Arthur would have paid a king's ransom to know that before being blasted right in the chest and sent flying backwards, crashing a whole hundred feet away.
"My king!" Arkantos and the others promptly ran to tend to their monarch, while a few stated with their allies, aiming their rifles at the portal. Meanwhile, both Doom Slayer and Grundy stood there, waiting for whoever had done that to come out.
Not a moment too soon, twelve armored figures stepped out of the portal, their armor similar to their underling's but carrying much larger weapons that glowed blue, followed then by a seventh, taller one, who stood up from them by their more intrincate suit, and an egg-shaped helmet with red blazing eyes.
Eyes that looked straight at Doom Slayer. Despite the helmet, it was obvious they were pissed at him, and the reason for it was clear to the soldier. However, for some reason Doom Slayer didn't attack, and neither did the others nor the invaders.
One of the atlantean soldiers, either losing his nerve or wanting to take out of the ones that attacked his home and king, decided to break the standoff and shot at the leader, aiming for their head. The energy beam hit the strangely shaped helmet, and the figure did recoil, but to the man's horror the shot did nothing to the invader, not even scratch the metal.
The leader, recovering from the attack, stared at the man for a second before the glow of the helmet's eyes intensified. Before the soldier could even move, fire again, scream, anything, the invader shoht a red beam that engulfed the atlantean's head, then the torso, and finally his entire body. Less than three seconds later, nothing except ashes remained from him.
The soldiers stared at the scorch mark that mere seconds before had been one of their number A regular hydro-pulse rifle couldn't do that in less than thirty seconds. How did they manage to get that kind of power from a mere helmet, none of the atlanteans knew. They did know, however, that one shot from that thing and they were dead.
Fortunately, they had Doom Slayer.
The rest of the invaders promptly raised their weapons and took aim at the remaining soldiers.
Even with their training and drive to kill, Doom Slayer and Grundy were still faster.
Eight shotgun blasts later, eight things that used to be living bodies laid on the floor, their flesh ripped apart. The other four had been dealt with by Grundy, two being punched to bits and the remaining two simply stomped on.
The leader didn't even flinch as blood splattered on his helmet, only doing so as the other atlanteans fired at him. Again, their fire didn't really hurt him.
Grundy growled and prepared to destroy the strange man, but a raised hand from Slayer stopped him. Confused, Grundy looked down at the soldier with a furrowed brow.
"Let's heard what they have to say first." He whispered to him. "They haven't attacked yet, and I want to know everything from them before finishing them off." He then turned to the astonished troopers. "That goes for you too."
Grundy looked back at the invaders, then at Slayer, before nodding and stepping back. The soldiers, confused but not wanting to anger Doom Slayer, backed off too, but never stopping aiming at the man as he had a stare down with Slayer.
The leader of the group was the first one to speak. "Why?" The distorted, deep voice was clearly male.
"Why what?" Slayer asked.
"Why are you helping these... monsters?!" His modulator could not hide the sheer anger behind the voice. "After what they did?! Knowing what they tink of us?! What they want to do to us?!"
"The 'monsters' you're talking about are already dead, killed by your friends. You know, focusing your rage on the Red Trident, and them alone, would have made you heroes, at least for these people."
"They share blood with those murderers! By extension they shed the blood of the innocent! It's just fair that we wanted to shed theirs for what they did to us, our spouses, our children!" The man began to rant. "And don't try to lie to me, you know they want to do it again, to the whole human race! This is not just about vengeance, it's about protecting the surface from these sea devils!" As he spoke, his eyes began to glow more and more, yet he made no move to attack.
Doom Slayer still said nothing.
"Every night until this day, I dreamt about my wife and son being killed by horrors from the deep, of my home being flooded. As the water washes away, the corpses rise and ask me: 'will you let it happen again?'" The man began to pace around, deep breaths coming from him. "I always said that I wouldn't, that I would save mankind from their fate, that I would give them closure, but no matter how many times I said it, how sure I was of it, it didn't change the fact they were already dead!"
"You bastards were killing our families!" One of the atlanteans soldiers shouted back, either feeling brave or the sentiment of anger from the hypocrite riling him up.
The invader stopped pacing to look at him, but just as he fired a blast Doom Slayer put himself between the soldier and him, taking the shot. Naturally, it still did nothing to him.
"It still doesn't change the fact you were killing people that had nothing to do with the Red Trident, David."
The man, now named David, turned to stare at Slayer, probably bewildered because he knew his name. However, before either could say anything, a blonde missile came from above Slayer and slammed into David, both of them flying backwards and into an abandoned house, screaming all the way.
It was Arthur, who despite having a good portion of his body hair burned, beard included, the bandage-covered skin of his chest scorched under the waps, and his left forearm burned to the bone and also wrapped, still had fight in him, given the toothy snarl on his face and the rage with which his eyes glowed. Plus, he still had his trident with him, which explained the force behind the jump.
"Get the hell out of my city!" They head him scream before he and David crashed inside the house.
Arkantos and his men, running towards them, moved to assist their ruler, but a raised hand frorm Doom Slayer stopped them. He didn't need to do anything else.
"No. This is something he has to do it himself."
"Why?" It was Grundy who asked that.
"I don't want to intervene in their fight. It's between Arthur and David, and only them." This caused several soldiers to cry in anger, but Slayer didn't seem to care.
Grundy became puzzled. "A duel?"
Slayer turned to look at him and nodded. "You could say it's one." He turned to look back at the house, already falling apart because of the fighting taking place inside of it, red beams of plasma piecing through the walls and rorof. "It's his city, his people he's fighting for against a man who has lost everything yet has directed his wrath towards those who didn't deserve it, and that's after killing the ones who did."
"I don't get it." A soldier muttered to his fellow, who nodded in agreement. Aside from this, though, they didn't show any sign of disagreement with Doom Slayer. Despite their bewilderment and ange, something still told them that, indeed, this was King Orrin's fight, and his alone.
"Shouldn't we help him then?" Arkantos asked. He didn't demand that Slayer helped the king of Atlantis even though he wanted to, he knew he simply couldn't. "He's still our king, and Atlantis is our city too, the one we swore to protect. Plus, he's still badly wounded even though we patched him up the best we could."
"Not bad enough to not ram into a man with the furry and speed of a sailfish, it seems."
Arkantos rraised a hand to protest, but then lowered it with a sigh. Again, he had no way to go against Doom Slayer's wishes. "Alright, but you realize that if the king dies, the blame will lay on you, and only you, right?"
Doom Slayer didn't even bother to look at him as he gave his response. "
Meanwhile, in the house, two were fighting to the death. Furious as he was Arthur had forgotten about what Slayer had told him to do, and David naturally held Arthur as responsible for everything that had happened since the Voyager. Both wanted the other dead, plain and simple, but it appeared that they had understimated each other as well: the atlantean king was stronger and of heavier built, and his trident was a betterweapon than David's merre knife, but mere minutes prior he had been blasted by an attack that by all rights should have killed him, and despite his anger he actually didn't fully know hand to hand fighting; David, on the other hand, was driven by both the power of hatred and sorrow which, added to his suit and his lack of care for himself, made him a dangerous opponent, the kind of opponent who paid no mind having a trident impaled on his belly, but at the same time the tackle from before had destroyedd his the firing mechanism of his helmet.
"You should have left when you killed the Trident!" Arthur screamed as they exchanged blows amidst falling pieces of debris, trying his best to push the trident deeper and kill his enemy.
"I'm not leaving until all of you are nothing but corpses on the sea floor, and your city lies in ruin!" David screamed back before kicking Arthur away into a wall. Screaming in anger he tore the trident off his belly, not caring the slightest about the had just worsened, and threw it at Arthur... his worst mistake.
Arthur, recovering from the previous attack, grabbed the flying trident by its handle, but instead of trying to spear David he used it as a makeshift bat this time, hitting David as far as he could. The nigh unbreakable trident, coupled with Arthur's already superhuman strength increased by adrenaline, became too much for David, who collapsed to the ground. Blood trickled from small openings on the helmet.
Seeing his opponent, the reason thousands of his people had died, laying there on the ground, Arthur reached for his head and began punching it with the stump of his left arm, and continued to do so, until the helmet of the man finally opened, the red light on its eyes dying out. Victorious, Arthur grabbed the sides of the hole and pried it open, using both hand and stump to do so, wanting nothing more to string the bastard's head like a fish and parade it around the city, so consumed he was by anger.
That feeling of hatred faded away when he saw a black man, bearded and brown-eyed, glaring at him from inside the helmet. One of his eyes was blood red, his lips were cut, and tears were pouring from a gash on his left temple, but he was still defiant even in the face of death. That, or simply insane. Both were equally possible given everything that happened. Or, even more possibly...
"Kill me." He whispered. "At least let me reunite me with my family."
Seeing him there, begging him to kill him. It also reminded him of what Doom Slayerhad told him to do. It wasn't an order, nor a command, but nonetheless after draining his anger with David and clearing his head, and simply seeing David lay there pathetically, Arthur decided that the beating had been enough. The real punishment would be decided by the surface's judges, not him.
Arthur sighed as he caressed his head his head and looked around. The fight had been so fierce that the house they had been fighting in was now little more than a pile of rubble. A small voice in his head whispered that many more houses had been destroyed, and those had to have corpses in them, but his decision had been made.
"KILL ME!" David screamed this time as Arthur grabbed him and hefted his body over his shoulders.
"I'm sorely tempted, but despite everything you and your army have done, that's not my decision to make." Arthur replied as he limped back to Doom Slayer. Arkantos and his men, seeing their monarch wounded but standing and carrying with the enemy leader over his shoulders.
"My liege!" "You are bleeding like a stuck tuna!" "You defeated the bastard!" And so on as they mobbed him.
Doom Slayer made his way to Arthur, the atlantans making way for the behemoth. "You did as I asked and didn't finish him."
"I really didn't want to, but then..." He trailed off befoe shaking his head. "Just... just send him to the Hague or wherever mass murderers are sent, dammit." Arthur growled out before tossing the man at Doom Slayer, who caught him with ease.
"I'm sorry."
Tired as he was, and as his men dragged him to the closest physician, Arthur didn't know if Slayer said that to him, or David, but at that moment he just didn't care: a a part of his city laid in shambles, thousands had been killed, many atlanteans (his half brother included ) would want vengeance on the surface, and he wanted to see if Mera was alright. He had a lot of work to do.
Hundreds of miles away, on the surface, John Constantine wondered how the fuck did he end up like this.
Another early chatper because of New Year's Eve.
So, the Atlantis arc has finished AND Aquaman's hook has a new origin, but Slayer has yet to tell Arthur the other reason he came, there will still be consequences for what has happened (including a political shitstorm), and something still undisclosed has happened to John. Does the resolution for the arc seem good for you guys? Did the 'he's gotta finish this himself' reasoning of the SI seem reasonable, despite?
Also, I've started another story, 'Seeds of War' a crossover/fusion between Halo and Command and Conquer, specifically the Tiberium series, and the basic premise is that the Covenant fights both the GDI and Nod, who take the place of the UNSC, and the war ends up more or less even rather than a somewhat one-sided genocide. It's just a chapter long, and a rather short chapter, but I'd like it if you gave it a look. No, this story is not going to be abandoned like the others, far from it, but the new story seems promising, so from now on I'll alternate per week