It seems like I've been saying this a lot, like there's a trend to my life. Once again it's a few days after I'd left the International Pro Slayer Headquarters, and they're yet again ordering me to do something. After becoming a Pro Slayer, I'm being sent to live in a dorm with my squadmates. They are all interesting people, though I think I'll go insane living with them. Ella is a coward of a person without a single bit of confidence in her body. But she's cute. Grover is the definition of a human battery, a battery that's powering a megaphone that's attached to loudspeakers. That's it. Jamie and Austin I don't know much about but, Jamie seems to be low-key psychotic to me and Austin is an asshole and one of the snobbiest guys I know. As for our Squad Captain, Nick Boras, the famous Slayer Hachi, nicknamed the "Bumblebee," he's a bit of a mystery as well. He seems to be drawn to me but has yet to give a clear reason as to why. And his eyes...they always look a little sad, like he's regretting past mistakes.
I spent the next few days piling clothes and other necessities into a suitcase. "Got my hoodies and jeans, my toothbrush…" I glance over to my video games, and shove them into my suitcase without a second thought. "What else would I need?"
My mom stands in the doorway of my room, wiping the edges of her eyes. "Do you really have to go?" She whimpers.
"Yeah mom, they want me dorming in some house with my squadmates for a while. But don't worry, I can come home for the holidays! Besides, I'll still be living close by!" I answer.
"It just seems that…you're always being forced to grow up too soon," my mom sobs, on the verge of tears. It's too hard for me to watch, so I have to look away.
"But no drinking!" My mom then snaps.
"Huh?!" I then cry.
"And no drugs, no girls either. Go to bed early and make sure to do your homework!" My mom continues, causing me to laugh.
"Mom, mom, do I really seem like a party animal to you? I'm a loser!" I ask.
"Not to me," she sweetly replies. "My little Professional Slayer."
And that brings me to where we are now, standing outside of my new house, suitcase in hand.
I don't know what I was expecting this house to look like. But I guess just a… normal looking house isn't it. It's a pretty nice house, at least, from the outside, that is. Big, too, two stories and a basement. All left alone to five puberty-riddled teenagers with minimum adult supervision from a man-child of a guy. What could go wrong?
When I enter the dormhouse, everyone is already inside. Nick, Ella, and the others are all sitting at the kitchen table, chatting away.
"Yo, bud, over here!" Grover calls to me, pulling a chair up for me. I thank him and sit down.
"Welcome, everyone to your new home!" Nick says. "You all are here right now because it is far easier to manage a squad of five people if they are all in the same location. As for rules: keep the place clean, no alcohol, drugs, or ANY inappropriate behavior. Go to school, go to bed early, you are allowed to go back home on weekends or holidays or if you take off sick days or vacation time. I will drop by every morning to check on you kids and I will let you know a few days in advance on whether or not you have missions to carry out. After school we will have combat and Cursed Power training. If you have missions, then you are permitted to skip school. Leave the team breakdowns for missions to me. As for missions, as rookies, you will often be dispatched to take care of nests of low level demons."
"Nests?" I ask.
"Basically, there are two kinds of demons," Nick explains. "Powerful, intelligent, humanoid demons, and weak, mindless, monstrous demons. Weak, mindless demons tend to group up into what we call "nests" because they're too weak to survive on their own. Nests are typically formed in places that aren't often visited by humans, such as abandoned hospitals, sewers, or cemeteries in areas with high contractions of Cursed Power."
"I see…so that's what we're dealing with…" I reply.
"And I think that's all. Any questions?" Nick asks.
Everyone is silent until Grover asks: "when is our first mission going to be?"
"To be determined," Nick answers. "I want you all to get situated to your new lives and living accommodations first before getting sent out on missions."
"How long do we have to do this for?" I asks
"Currently, you guys are known as Squad Patrol Slayers. This is a job typically only taken by rookies, since it involves living in a dorm house for the rest of your life until you get promoted to Senior Pro Slayers, and pick a new job within the organization, which takes a couple of years to do so," Nick answers.
"Did you have to do this dormhouse squad thing too?" Jamie asks.
"Yup, all rookies do," Nick answers.
"What job did you take up after being promoted?" Ella asks.
"Classified," Nick nonchalantly answers. Eh? Another piece to the Nick puzzle.
"If I can guess your job, will you spar with me?!" Grover giddily asks, like a kid in a candy store.
"Sure, but you're not going to guess it," Nick smirks. The five of us carry on with our conversation, ignoring Grover who's rattling off random job titles from within the Organization.
"You got to ask us all the questions. Do we not deserve to know about you as well, if you're going to be leading us?" Austin asks. Good point.
"Meh, I doubt I'll be fighting besides you kids at all. I'm just here to schedule missions and look after you a bit. You can call me "dad" if you want," Nick laughs at his joke but the rest of us just cringe. "Well, anyways, I'll schedule a five man mission soon, should be your first one. Ta-ta!" Nick then says as he gets up, stuffs his hand in his pockets, and exits our dormhouse.. What a mystery man, it seems every interaction I have with Nick just gives me more questions than answers, and leaves me with a feeling of dread.
And thus, my new life as a Pro Slayer began.
***
"Ohhh kiddiessss, I have something for you!" Nick booms the very second that he barges through the front door to our dormhouse.
"WHAT IS IT, SLAYER HACHI SIR?!" Grover booms as he teleports directly in front of Nick less than a second later, causing the man to flinch a little, as he peers down at Grover in annoyance.
"I've got a present for you guys," Nick answers as he worms his way past Grover and further into our dormhouse. Nick then drops the bundle of whatever he's holding onto our kitchen table, as Grover teleports directly besides Nick, panting heavily in excitement.
"What's all this hub-bub about?" I ask as I stroll down the stairs of our dormhouse and into our kitchen. Ella and Austin follow me as well, as a sweaty Jamie emerges from the training gym in their basement.
"Ta-da!" Nick exclaims as he grabs one package from the bundle that he wa sholdign and holds it up to us. "School uniforms!"
The rest of us are silent.
"School…uniforms…?"
"Yeah!" Nick answers. "Remember? I told you guys that you'll be going to the academy for Junior Pro Slayers, in between your missions!"
The rest of us are silent again.
"SCHOOL?!"
"I'LL DO ANYTHING FOR YOU, SLAYER HACHI SIR, BUT THIS IS A BIT MUCH!" Grover exclaims.
"School makes me unformattable…" Ella adds as she digits nervously.
"I wanted to become a Pro Slayer to avoid school!" Jamie groans in frustration.
"School is quite lackluster," Austin says as he does the anime-glasses-guy thing again. "I've learned everything I know without it."
Austin may be a nerd and all, but even some nerds don't like school, I guess. Austin is more of a geek who likes tinkering with computers all by his lonesome, kinda like how I'm a video game nerd, rather than a school nerd who loves match n' shit.
"I guess avoiding school was too much for a man to dream…" I sigh.
Great. I still have to do this high school shit on top of my Pro Slayer duties?!
***
Location: Unknown demon research base run by the Professional Slayer Organization
Date: August 23rd, 2016
Time: 7:48 P.M.
"It's breaching, it's breaching!" One scientist shouts to another.
"It's going to break free!" Cries a second.
"What about the Slayers we hired, where are they right now!?" Barks the first .
"Already dead!" The second answers.
"Crap…" mutters the first scientist. "They told us these were high ranking slayers!" Just how powerful is this damn demon?!"
The four scientists are held up in what appears to be an underground bunker in a secret laboratory. Before them, are the corpses of their fellow scientists, strewn about. The organs and guts of the fallen scientists litter the laboratory floor, which is slippery with blood.
The scientists hear a stomp coming from behind the bunker's sealed door, causing them to flinch.
"It's here…" one scientist whispers.
"Prepare yourselves," says another
The scientists prepare for the worst, but when the bunker door opens, the scientists are simply met with one of their peers.
"Ah, Jerry, you're okay!" One of the scientists gleefully exclaim.
But then, "Jerry" limply falls to the ground as nothing more than a corpse, revealing the figure who was standing behind Jerry holding his dead body propped up in the air like a puppet.
Were you expecting some hideous, deformed creature, like the one that Luis saw earlier? Well if you were, then you'd be wrong. Because rather than some grotesque fiend standing in the doorway of the bunker, stood just a normal looking woman in her late twenties. Other than the splatters of blood all across her body. The woman is boss impressively tall and muscular for a female, and has long, curly, fiery red hair. She has a hideous, toothy grin plastered on her face, which made it seem like all of the blood and gore excited her. She sports a hot red leather jacket and a motorcycle helmet with a pair of goggles on them over her head. The woman's most striking features, the features which shocked the scientists to their core, are her blood stained black claws, horns, and tail.
"That's it…isn't it," one of the scientists shudder.
"We were only trying to summon a low level demon for our research, why did it have to turn out this way!" Sobs another.
"Play with fire and you get burned, boys! You should have known to never tamper with the forces of Hell! Finally, each and every last member of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are on Earth!" The woman cackles.
"The demon known the calamity it causes. The nickname given to it is based on how wherever it goes, anger, hatred, and mass destruction follows. One of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse under the Demon King, Death. "War the Calamity"," a scientist mutters under their breath.
"Bingo!" The woman -now known as War- booms as they point at the scientist. "Although you forgot one thing!" War adds, causing the scientist to shiver.
In the blink of an eye with supernatural speeds, War disappears from the entrance to the bunker, and reappears before the scientist. "Don't use gender neutral pronouns with me! That might fly with Famine, but I'm a hot lady and I deserve some credit!" War roars, sounding genuinely ticked off. War reaches out and grabs the scientist's face with a single meaty claw, causing the scientist to scream. And in one fell swoop, War closes her claw on the scientists' head, caving in their skull and sending their blood and brains splattering everywhere. The scientist's limp body falls to the ground.
"Argh, you got your damn brains on my jacket!" War snaps, desperately trying to wipe the blood of her leather jacket. "Oh…whatever," War then says with a defeated sigh as she turns towards the final scientist. "You there!" War barks as she points towards the scientist, causing them to flinch. "Have you seen a black haired demon with creepy green eyes and a gray suit around here? Goes my Death, the Demon King?"
"We-we're not afraid of you, demon!" The scientist shivers. "The Pro Slayers will defeat you, you'll never get away with this!"
War narrows her eyes at the scientists. "Does that…" she growls. "ANSWER MY QUESTION?!" In one fell swoop, War appears before the scientists, jabs a clawed hand into their chest, rips out their heart, causing blood to splatter everywhere, tosses it to the ground, and stomps on it, crushing it instantly. The scientist limply falls to the ground.
Wars yawns, and brushes her claws against one another, which then morph into regular, human looking hands. War's horns and tail retreat back into her body as well. "I guess I'll have to find Death the old fashioned way. Famine should be with him, too. And I'm sure that Pestilence is still MIA," War says to herself as she struts back towards the bunker's door, but War is interrupted when two more figures appear in the doorway of the bunker.
"Stop right there!" One of the figures, a gruff older man, shouts as they point towards War. "GRR-AHH!" The man slams their fist into the ground, sending spiked pillars of stone flying out of the ground towards War. War raises an eyebrow at the man, before holding a hand up.
"Invincisphere!" War shouts, and what appears to be a transparent bubble forms around War, completely blocking the man's attack. "Paaa-thetic!" War groans, as the bubble-shield around her begins to shrink until only a small bubble is formed around War's fist. War then chambers her fist. "Bubble-Gun!" War shouts as she punches outwards, sending the bubble that was around her fist flying towards the man like a bullet, striking him in the center of his chest. The man then crumbles to the ground.
"Slayer Iwa!" The second figure, a woman, cries out. "Damn you…" she growls as she turns back to face War, holding both hands out towards the demon. "Laser Beam!" She shouts, sending a bright red blast of energy flying towards War. War counters by holding a hand up and snapping her fingers, and just like before, a bubble shield forms around War's body, completely blocking the Slayer's attack.
"Invincisphere!" War shouts as she charges the Slayer, and just as before, the shield around War shrinks until a singular bubble remains around her fist. "Juggernaut Fist!" War shouts as she thrusts her fist forwards, piercing the Slayer and blowing out their chest, sending another wave of blood and guts splattering everywhere. The Slayer lets out a final groan before limply falling to the floor. Only War remains.
"Damn," War grumbles. "You got your nasty guts all over my jacket! Whatever. Time to find Death."
And with that, War exits the underground bunker for good.