John and Sera are walking with Evie, Roland, Jake, and Sheene to the press room, they talk about life in general and the stress free things about it, John still remembers the horrible nightmares that took place last night. The horrid thoughts that haunt him. They depart as he and Sera go to the press room to meet up with Arlo and Isen. John keeps walking further from Sera, going off in his own head as he pieces things together.
"So, Arlo and Blyke have something to do with James, and James, he's just, he's still alive. I saw him, I can save him. And mom, she's definitely -" John gets cut off as Sera overhears him speaking out loud. "Who's James?" she asks. John stutters in response as he tries to formulate a response back. "Hey, are you okay? You were talking out loud." John nods. "Uh yeah, I'm fine." Sera looks at him rather strangely. "If you ever get overwhelmed, let me know." John nods. "This goes both ways, okay?" John shakes his head up and down once again before he opens the door for Sera, the two head in as Isen gets the place ready for everyone. "Hey guys." He says greeting them. "Hey, where are we at with this?" John asks. "Okay, we should go over his records again, make sure we didn't miss anything." Sera looks at John with a glare. "So, he's definitely hiding something, John confirmed with me that Cecile worked with him" she thought to herself. "That bastard is definitely working for Ember. I'll....."
Arlo starts to zone out as he sits back and watches everyone else participate in the meeting. White noise plays as horrible images of him at a family barbecue, he sees two boys, one with red hair and two with black hair, he goes into the house to use the bathroom when he overhears his Aunt say something. "I have the boy. I have what you want, now give me what I want." He then overhears the man speaking on the other end of the phone. "Hey, if you have the kid, I'll have the drugs." The woman starts to cry. "Yes please, just leave my family alone" she pleads. "Is he a cripple?" The man asks. "This one, yes." The man then smiles as he fondles with a mask sitting right beside him on a desk. "Good, cause I don't want me toys growing up to hurt me." Auntie starts to cry as a van pulls up, Arlo runs to the black haired boys. "J*&n! James, watch out!" A man with a mask walks up to the young boy. He was built rather bulky and wore a purple tie with crimson red streaks, complimented by a white suit.
The man picks James up and throws him in the back of a van, everyone at the party has been drugged as John is dragged in the house by his Auntie. Arlo looks around to see Blyke being dragged into his family's minivan. Arlo then sees a woman in front of him, she swings and knocks him out. "Arlo? ARLO?! ARLO?!" Arlo wakes up as he looks around the press room. "Ahh, sorry, I'm just out of it" he groans. "What's up then?" Sera asks. "I, I can't help but feel guilty, I kinda did this already with someone else, and it…" John puts his hand on Arlo's shoulder.
"Look man, don't act like we don't know what you did, it's fine, you pulled my files, tried to get me to use my powers, got Meili and Ventus to help, it didn't work out, and you got what you deserved. No one's gonna care in a year from now, but this is Sera's power we're talking about, this is more than some beef between you and me. They held her at knife point and tried to kidnap her twice, so get your shit together, cause right now we need a leader." Isen looks at John and Arlo as he judges the situation with disgust. Arlo looks up at John and sighs. "Okay then, now when they invaded my house, they had just four members, we had two active high tiers myself included, Sera was crippled, and Elaine our healer." Arlo says as he gets up and paces around the room. "And somehow we had a stalemate." John looks at Arlo as his eyes glint gold. "Not quite, I managed to capture two of them." Sera looks at John concerned. "Did you get anything out of them?" John shakes his head out of disappointment. "No, I just, they cro...." Suddenly Sera's nose starts to bleed, her eye turns black and red, she starts to feel dizzy and falls, John comes to his senses and catches her. "Sera? Crap Isen lock the place!" Isen nods. "Uhh, on it!" John pulls out his pocket knife and takes off his jacket, in his bag is some dressing for what is about to come.
"John, what's going on?! Why is Sera?" Arlo pauses mid sentence before finishing. "A Devil Man?!" John looks up at Arlo, enraged. "KNOCK IT OFF ARLO, DON'T YOU DARE LABEL HER AS ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE!!!!!!" John starts to cut a piece of his flesh off, he then pulls the tissue off and gives it to Sera. The room looks at the two horrified as they realize they have a devil tier among their ranks. Isen unlocks the door for Elaine to come in, behind her are Blyke and Remi. "Sera?" Elaine asks as John activates his ability and heals Sera with Elaine. "You guys can't let this leave the room" John says with a deep voice. "But John, what if she's in some kinda...." John cuts Elaine off. "No, listen, I, I don't know if you're gonna believe me, but she's well, this is temporary."
"John, what are you talking about she's-" John cuts Arlo off. "Arlo would you shut the HELL UP?!" The group backs up out of fear. "The fact of the matter is, this thing isn't a virus, you're either born with it or you're clean, but Sera wasn't born with it, yet somehow she has this thing. If I told you what happened you wouldn't believe me!" John sighs. He goes to check on Sera, he sees her eye condition gone. "God, how long are we supposed to keep this going for, you better have a plan." John then looks back at the group. "Sorry, I didn't mean to lose it." Remi looks at her watch. "Blyke, we need to go back, Meili and Ventus have math next, we have a free period, so we can work on the Safe House." Blyke nods his head and the two leave, leaving Arlo, Isen, John, Sera, and Elaine. "Okay, I'll take Sera to the infirmary" Elaine says as she and Sera leave. Isen, John, and Arlo are left." Arlo glares at Isen with authority. "Isen, you mind?" He asks. "Oh, no problem." Isen says as he leaves Arlo and John by themselves. "John, I don't know what's been going on lately, but you've been dragging Sera away from her duties." John glares at Arlo. "Excuse me?" He asks, offended. "You heard me perfectly clearly." Arlo states. "That's the problem asshole! You think she's in any shape to do royal work, she's got whatever those freaks have! The Oklahoma City Bastard disease!" Arlo slams his fist on the desk Isen was at. "And maybe if you two weren't going off so much and talking to "God" whatever that means, then maybe-" John slams his head into Arlo.
"Are you kidding me, you're a joke!" Arlo grabs John by the collar. "Hey now, remember who's still King here. Besides, if you're not careful, I can make it so that you never see Sera again. After all, you're not an official Royal."
Joker.
John's eyes narrow into Arlo's soul.
"If you're not careful, that might just change."
"Well then, now that you're finally not a wuss, we decide who's King of Wellston, Friday after school. Where you fought Zeke." John starts to get spiteful. "Oh you sure about that, you can always just break my phone, and manipulate me into luring people out in a field, I kinda like that option better." Arlo shoves John as he begins to break. "Piss off!" John puts his hands in his pockets and leaves the room, slamming the door on Arlo. "So then, it's finally going down." John begins to walk down the hallway as Arlo loathes by himself. "You think that you're so tough John, well I was practicing my ability a bit, and unlocked something a little...."
UnNatural.
Arlo activates his barrier, his eyes glow yellow like his hair, the barrier has spikes on it, and upon activation everything in the room was blasted. His eyes return to blue. "Despite unlocking whatever this is, it still kinda hurts, it looks like I'll still need to make sure I can handle my regular barrier."
*Additional information*
Arlo Unnatural: Barrier heal 4.3 Barrier turns blue and heals itself and anyone inside.
Barrage 8.3. Allows barrier to cause devastating damage when activated, increased reflective damage, and expansion, the spikes also can deal mass amounts of damage.
"So then, it looks like this is the battle for Sera, since she won't be able to say anything due to her lack of ability. What a scumbag move. I expect that out of freaks like Zeke, and scumbags like phantom push kid, but a King."
It makes me sick.
Meanwhile in Downtown Wellston, a secret base in an underground undisclosed location Keon stood around. "Any reports?" Keon asks. "No sir, but we have an updated population record on the devil men." A man named Rex says. "Good, give it to the director." Keon orders. Rex bows before complying. He stood up tall at around six foot one and had his hair done nicely. He was rather handsome and resembled the type to be superman if anyone had to be. Rex goes into the back room to take a smoke break with his boys. "Hey RR!" One of the men yells. "What's up fellas!" He says. In the room are David, Sesquie, Shelly, Levi, Kyle, and Jackson. The Mountain Core regiment of the CDM, Counter Devil Men unit. A newly formed unit of Warriors and soldiers that are here to fight the Devil tiers ever since the attack on Oklahoma City. They all gather around a round table and pull out a poker set. "Hold up everyone, I got to take this, you all start a game without me, I'm gonna be a while." Jackson says. "OOOOOHHHHH, It's Hanna guys." One man says as the others start to burst out in laughter at the seventeen year olds joke. "You're literally a child." Jackson says, rolling his eyes. They continue to laugh while Jackson leaves to go to the break room. There a young blond woman is finishing talking to her father. "Hey Hanna, you needed me?" Jackson stood in front of a blond woman. His gray eyes met her rather dull golden ones.
"Ahh, yes, sorry I was just about to finish up with Detective Epstienle on the James Doe case." Hanna said as she put some files down. "Ohh, too cool to call your own father dad now?" Detective Jeffery Epstienle says.
Hanna blushes as her father walks into the room looking like a mess. His unkempt and rather long gray hair flew in his face. One eye seemed to bulge while another one always remained barely open. Jackson starts to laugh at Hanna's response. Jeff leaves the room. After the door clicks Hanna wraps herself around Jackson. "Ohh man, this feels nice, work's kinda been stressful. I didn't wanna scare my old man with you in my arms." Hanna says with a smile on her face. "Yeah, I can imagine, we still don't have contact with The Golden God." Jackson says. "Yeah well, let's just stop thinking about that. We're on our break, remember?" Hanna asks. "Only if you stop thinking about the James Doe case." Hanna nods. "I'm sorry if I bother you with that, it's just that, what kind of mother sells her own child, and on top of that, to devil tiers. He's just a small child. You know how I feel about children. I almost wish I was cold and heartless with this job." Jackson smiles as he pulls Hanna close to his chest. The two felt each others warmth in the privacy of their own office.
"Well, I think that makes you a wonderful, caring, kind, sweet, amazing person." The two start to act flirty when Jackson's phone goes off in the middle of their "session". "Well, looks like I've been drafted." Jackson states. Fear suddenly crawls up Hanna despite her knowing about this. "Jackson, please be careful, the city isn't like the wasteland, it's-" Jackson cuts her off. "Hanna, I'll be fine, it can't be that bad."
Jackson heads out to the meeting room to meet up with other people who are being called up to do a scouting mission. The director of the CDM explains that they will be going on a scouting mission to plan for the upcoming raid to take back New Oklahoma city. They read the list of devil tiers and their locations around the city. Their names and abilities, mostly involving crystallization of the plasma in their blood. The meeting is then dismissed as Jackson packs his gear, puts on his riot armor and brings a suitcase to a loaded swat truck. In the truck is his friend David, alongside them is Hanna's father Jeffery Epstienle.
The Convoy moves out until they reach New Oklahoma city, where they look to see the scarecrows standing tall over the sunrise. The abandoned suburbs surrounding the city. It's now morning and the team unloads their gear. A motorcycle can be heard from a distance. Out from the truck a man speaks up. "Oh boy, I know that sound from anywhere." Jackson looks surprised at the man. "Greg? You too were drafted?" He asks as a motorcycle pulls up, a boy in a helmet with white hair and red eyes greets everyone, he takes off his helmet to show the stitches in his face. Like battle scars, each one represents a moment of pain in his life. From his traumatic childhood, all the way to last night when he had to put down his dog. A life's story expressed as art. "Hey guys!"
"Of course you'd show, even after...." The boy named Perible cuts Greg off. "Aww come on, you think I'd just leave you alone after....." Suddenly he too is cut off by a loud noise which was followed up by screaming. Behind him are two blue devil tiers, similar to Rein's ability, and on his right are a dog and an ape looking Devil Tier.
TAKE COVER!!!!
Gun shots can be heard, the devil tiers are starting to emerge with sub machine guns. They open fire on some of the CDM agents, killing three agents. Greg shields David, but they get launched from behind, a man with a mysterious mask appears. It grins an evil smile, has no eyes. Jackson busts out two large swords. Prepared for battle he poses his stance at the group of devil tiers. Ready to shed blood. The devil tier with no eyes points at Jackson, the two tailed freaks charge at Jackson with their blue tails. They jump meters in the air, swinging in harmony and using each other for mobility and strength. Meanwhile Greg and Perbile are fighting The Freak with no eyes, its evil grin strikes fear into their souls. His legs disappear and out of his robes pop spider legs, they swing and strike the area around, taking out more agents, but none from the squad of five. Jackson swings his blades at the twins but misses, they keep striking from different places but miss or get blocked, Jackson is starting to get angry, not having any control of the situation he loses it. "DAMMIT, Why did this have to happen, why did the city have to be invaded, what did we do to have to be targeted like this?
Jackson's eyes start to glow red, his artificial ghoul ability starts to kick in. "WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE TO HAVE TO FEAR FREAKS LIKE YOOOUUUUUUU!" Jackson flashes back to when he was in the orphanage, a priest comes out of the confession booth. "Father, how was mass today?" The Priest inside nods. "Good my son, hey, why don't you go help brother Tom with the batch of communion while me and Dave here have a little confession time." Jackson nods. "Okay! Tom? Toooom?"
The priest's eyes focus on Dave, he closes the doors and locks them. He gets a rush in him. He then looks at the little boy and starts to salivate, he then has bright red identical glow out of his back, they snatch the boy and rip him apart, he then gags the boy. Jackson watches in horror as he looks through the keyhole of the church door. "Noo, please. Dave?" He starts to cry, sadness washed over him like the rain is present day. The two twin blue brothers start to charge once more at Jackson. As visions of Dave's death play over and over, Jackson mutters these last words to the two freaks.
"You, you freaks took so many people, you took so many lives and wifes away, brothers and sister's, Father's and mother's…. You took my father away. For that, I'll kill you." Anger is the only thing Jackson feels as he strikes down his foes. He swings one blade into the devil tiers chest, then another, both strikes cause blood to fly.
"I hate you" The two demons rot right in front of Jackson as they begin to decompose. Meanwhile Greg and David are running around trying to find Perbile. They then run into some trouble, David runs into someone he recognizes. Someone familiar. "J-Johnathan?" Right in front of him are two devil tiers, one wearing a mask with teeth, gas filters on the side, and an eyepatch, another is wearing a hood and bars over half its face. They power up but the servant looks straight at the boy who said J-Johnathan. The two brothers recognize who they are, both remembering their lives before they were separated, they power down and both fall onto their knees, remembering their childhood together and how they were brothers from the same mother. "B-b-brother?" The devil tier speaks back, remembering that voice. "D-David?" The two power down and embrace, remembering all the years of pain they had to endure, not knowing if they were alive or not.
"Hey Jack, let's go on the slide." David says. "Uhh, I don't know, I'm scared of it." Jack says back rather timidly. "Oh come on, it's not that bad." Jack gets bumped into by a blonde haired kid, running past him is a redhead and two black haired boys, the last black haired boy stops and helps him up. "Uhh, hey there buwdy, you okay?" The boy asked.
At this point, John, the blond boy, and Blyke look back to see James and the two other boys. "Hey, hurry up, the floor is-" The blond boy gets cut off. "Hey now, you bumped into this guy, that's not nice!" James yells. John, the Blond boy, and the red head all look back and go at the two boys. "I'm sowwy about that" The blond boy says as he bows. "Yeah man, we were just playing floor is lava. We didn't mean to hit you." John reaches his hand out. "You wanna play with us?" The boy looks up at John's hand, reaching out to him, he then see's James right in front of him, the little boy turns into a demonic thing as the present comes crashing down. "Wait, JAMES! Your?!" The Devil man looks at his servant with confusion. "No, this can't be, they're the two boys from...." James starts to cry out of his eye patch, the human side of him is covered up, he swore that the humans aren't his friends, they sold him after bringing him into this wretched world. His eye glows red and black, he unzips his mask and screams in pain. He looks at the two twin brothers embracing. Longing for his own.
"Why......You were so powerful...You could have been my.... oh who am I kidding, why do I act like this, I'm not a devil man. I'm a human. My servant was a human. His brother is a human. "I'm human. I'M HUMAN! NOT A FREAK! Yet, I don't get the fair game in life. Neither did they! It was taken by that man, and I didn't even get to kill him. That bastard hero did. The Golden God, and now, I'm watching someone else get a happy ending. Well.....We'll see about that! James sends a giant tentacle towards the two crying brothers as his eye turns a violent red and black. If I can't see my brother, THEN WHY THE HELL SHOULD YOU SEE YOURS???!!!!
James Doe stands over the corpses, not sure if he wants to laugh or cry, regretting his decisions yet not even sure if he had a choice in life. "John, I'll find you one day, Who knows, we might crack a cold one together, talk abilities, haha. I just need to kill The Golden God first, that bastard took away my revenge, four years of making him my slave, for nothing." James walks away to the two corpses, he senses someone standing near him, he looks to find a boy in stitches with a Psyche looking down from a roof. Blood on his hands from killing two devil tiers. "Why you smiling boy? You know what you just did to them?" Perbile jumps down into battle, he waves his Psyche around and charges at James, James activates his ability and does the same.
You sealed their fate just as I will to yours.
To be Continued.....