What in abomination had to be the explanation for this travesty!
I mean the sidecar! The sidecarrrr! It looked absolutely pitiful! It was basically a parasite dragging the foot of the bike, and even that was putting things mildly!
"No bloody complaining!" Kai said out loud as soon as we got to the bike. "What you see is what you get!"
This was the most emotional I'd ever seen him, so I guess the guy held quite the sentimental value for his vehicles. And so, being the kind and courteous person that I was, I did not fight against this notion and simply adhered to it, practicing my right to remain silent.
After all, it didn't matter how I got there, so long as I did.
Once I was finally in the damn thing, Kai hopped onto the the seat of the bike and started the engine; its large six-cylinders bellowing roughly in contrast to the sounds that accompanied this specific night.
Before I knew it, we were already off with the wind blowing against our faces. I took another deep breath for my nerves and held tightly onto my hockey stick.
This was it. This nightmare of a day would finally end now.
"Crazy how it hasn't even been a day," I muttered.
"Crazy indeed."
At first, his voice started out only as a whimper but as time slowly passed by, I realised that it wasn't just a figment of my own imagination.
"What do you want?" I asked silently, as the sight of the ancient civilisation of Biouldeon passed by me in the distance.
He didn't answer me directly, but as soon as he did, I knew that his absence had been the best parts of the day. Of course, after having a full vacuum of silence, he just had to come to rub some salt on my wounds.
"Nothing much. How's the arm?"
Fucking git.
"Oh, I don't know. It's pretty good, I guess, apart from the fact that I can't even FEEL it in the cast! Like it's straight up my whole left arm that's gone!"
"Huh, strange. I swore I remember it being much lighter in color than it is now," the Reaper continued. "That's rather a pity."
"Yeah, like you're not partially responsible for this!"
"But I wasn't the one abusing our Contract, Rainy Boy. I simply gave you an option to bail out of the consequences of your actions. As a matter of fact, I think you should be pretty damn grateful to me for having helped you!"
...
I remained silent for I had no counter-argument to this.
Deep down, a part of me knew that he was probably right. Sadly, that small part of me was hugely overshadowed by the one that would never admit that the Reaper was right. Never!
The fact that the Reaper was also a relentless chatterbox did not help his case in the slightest.
Oh how I longed for actual peace and quiet in my life!
But still, there was something else for me to worry about. Growls of the Undeads from afar could be heard as clear as day, and the almost rhythmic beat of the tank's firings echoed through the streets with an air of finality.
At first, the both of them sounded pretty distant, like a spoon falling at the other side of the room. Slowly but surely though, as we got closer and closer while the night grew darker and darker, the two of them began to blend into a deafening symphony of horror, the sound of carnage and tortured souls coming together to become one. By the time we'd arrive, I wouldn't even be surprised if there were hundreds of Undeads lying around amidst the flames.
Yeah... Things looked bleaker than ever before!
Fortunately, I had nearly died multiple times in just this past 24 hours, so need I say that I was getting used to it? Probably not.
Anyways...
"How do you survive through the nights here?" I asked Kai, ignoring the Reaper's rants. "By the look of things, the place doesn't really give you any time to breath."
"Umm, I just drift by. Moving from one place to another, night after night. After ten years of doing the same thing over and over again, you'd be surprised by how much it becomes second-nature to you."
"Ten years!?" I asked in surprise.
In fact, now that I thought about it, he was probably yet another innocent soul who was unlucky enough to be born in the Outlands. Terrible as it was, he was certainly lucky to have not been smoked out by any slave-traders or raiders at that. If he had been surviving alone for ten years, well... I'd say he had fully made it in life!
"I guess you're not from the Outlands?" He asked me in return.
"Oh, can't say I am," I responded shortly.
It was neither the truth nor an exact lie, but the fact that I wasn't given a response made me anxious to add something more to that. And so, I did.
"I used to live up north, near the hills. It surely doesn't account for any of the Kingdoms, but still... it doesn't really radiate the same chaotic energy as here."
"Neat," he responded without much thought. "Anyways, we've got company!"
Hearing this ominous warning, I immediately turned my head to whatever reaches of the night I could see. Surely enough, not too far to our right, I saw countless of shadows running through the urban jungle ruins. Even without seeing them, the groaning surely gave it away as to who they were.
The Undeads. And boy oh boy did they come in numbers!
As soon as we came into an opening, it was finally clear what we were dealing with. Hundreds, and by that I meant hundreds(!), of those dead bastards were making their way towards the fiery blizzard. They were so hung up by the golden haze in front of them, like moths to a light, that they didn't even notice our presence.
A surprise, but surely a welcomed one, even if it was a tad bit unnerving.
"Never seen Undeads like that before," I noted, getting ready for any sudden inertia of action. "Most of the time, they just run towards you mindlessly."
"For a guy who was nervous about this whole thing less than twenty minutes ago, you sure do talk a lot."
"Talking makes me less nervous."
As if on cue, it was after this exact statement that the Reaper decided it was the perfect time to butt in yet again, his expression a pure showcase of excitement and joy. Whatever it was that he had come up with, I knew immediately that it was not going to be good for me.
I eyed him with absolute hostility, and saw that in a blink of an eye, he was gone. Instead, a beautiful butterfly had taken his place; its wings crimson red and twice the size of any species I knew.
I guess you could say it was a moth. A moth of Death, I should say.
As soon as I made this comment in my head, I felt a prickling sensation from my right arm. Turning down to look at it, I saw that there was some writing that had been inscribed onto my skin. It was red, and the closest thing that I could compare it to was blood, which was frankly nonsensical.
I wasn't bleeding, it was just one of the Reaper's antics.
Of course, the Reaper having his absolutely horrible, twisted sense of humor just had to have written something equally ludicrous.
"Beware he who is closest to ye..."
If that wasn't the cheesiest effort in history at trying to make someone scared of you, then it was certainly up there.
Ignoring this load of crap, I just looked back at the road and minded my own business, swiping those letters in the process.
Seeing this, the moth finally decided to leave and fade into the starry sky. The Reaper was definitely up to something, for he would only manifest into a physical form when an emergency arose. What that emergency was, I didn't have a single clue.
"We're here," Kai stated the moment that the tank was finally in sight. And surely what a sight it was!
Fire was everywhere; all was burnt and ashes flew, polluting the air everywhere it went. The trees which had once grown to fill the city of Biouldeon, all destroyed and gone due to the carnage. Smell of char and gunpowder filled the air, and the heat of the whole place was suffocating to the point my light-headedness had returned. All was red and yellow, and in the middle of it all, a dark shade of green.
The tank was standing in the middle of all of this wreckage proudly, shooting down all the incoming Undeads relentlessly.
Fortunately, due to this, our entrance into the fray went completely unnoticed.
Or so I had hoped.
"Shit," I cursed out as a handful of Undeads were running towards us. "Seems like this is going to be a long night."
I took a deep breath, and asked Kai to slow down.
"I'm going to jump off!"
Without even having to look back, Kai nodded and immediately slowed down the bike. Not only did he do this, but he also slid the bike at just the right angle to allow me an easy landing. Hockey stick in hand and handgun ready, I hopped down onto the streets below and prepared myself for a beating.
"Come at me!" I shouted out as two of them quickly arrived right in front of me.
One immediately went for my sides, stepping onto my left, and I jumped away from it out of reflex. Unfortunately, as if they had coordinated it, the other quickly made up for this by sliding behind me and readying its talons.
Fuck me.
Having no time to change my trajectory, I directly turned around and smashed my stick straight at the Undead's head. It didn't do as much damage as I was hoping to, but it did stop me from having a major problem of an infection. Whatever you do, getting your blood in contact with an Undead was the last thing you'd ever want.
As soon as the deed was done, I dropped further back to put some distance between us.
Just a couple of seconds and the effects of today had already showed themselves. Both my legs and one remaining arm felt stiff like twigs, and my whole body just didn't move as smoothly as before.
"Wish I had more recharge time," I groaned.
The world just didn't work that way sadly. Three more Undeads had come up since, and now I was looking against a 5-on-1 matchup. With a handicap of one arm, I didn't like my odds.
"Come on, I can't rely on the Reaper all the time!" I yelled out, readying my hockey stick as if a swordsman unsheathing his sword.
As soon as this motion was done, time continued once more. All five Undeads went straight towards me, and I began my own advance. I jumped straight towards them, causing them to move around me which I used to my advantage. Swinging my hockey stick in a complete arc, I managed to hit two of the buggers.
Yeah, two. If anything, I could've done better if I didn't have all these things going on.
As it remained, all five of them still stood.
Not wasting any time, as I noticed the fire around us getting bigger and bigger, I quickly went for a kill on the one closest to me. I faked an attack with my stick in hand, and immediately pull out my handgun.
Oh wai-- shit!
Forced to drop my hockey stick, I took a quick shot and down went two bodies. Thank the Lord that blood bullets were still strong as they had always been! Now onto the other three!
Well... I guess now onto me, seeing how they were already on my tail.
"You want a piece of me!"
I pulled the trigger, and-- CLACK.
"Oh for the love of--!"
Frustrated by my utter lack of planning, I quickly returned the gun back to my pocket and flipped my stick back into my hand. Letting my muscle memory take over, I pulled my 'sword' to pierce through everything in its path and decapitate all three.
With a swift motion through the air, I managed to finish it all, but it did come with a price. The muscles in my right hand felt strained, and I had to fight against wincing in pain.
"Damn it," I managed. At least with this, I could go back to dealing with the main problem. I turned around to face the tank, and...
I found the tank facing me, its turret pointing suspiciously close to where I was. I looked around and there was no live Undeads in sight.
"Ah, shit."
My body was completely paralysed from the fight before, and without a single second wasted, the shot was already fired.