The soldiers around me turned to stare.
Jake, the resident otaku, piped up first. "You serious, Dante? Rimuru Tempest is like, one of the strongest anime characters out there."
I raised an eyebrow. "Enlighten me."
"So first off, he's got this thing called 'Great Sage' - it's like an AI that lives in his head and gives him all sorts of advice and information. It helps him analyze his opponents, come up with strategies, even learn new skills on the fly."
I nodded along, only half-listening. Although, I had to admit, the idea of an all-knowing voice in my head, feeding me the secrets of the universe...it had a certain appeal.
"And then there's his 'Predator' ability," Jake continued, his voice rising with excitement. "He can just straight up eat his enemies and absorb their powers. Plus he's got this ultimate defense where he can't be harmed by anything weaker than himself, and he can regenerate from pretty much any injury, and-"
Ding.
I flinched, head snapping up. The hell was that? It sounded like it came from inside my own skull.
"Ability: Great Sage has be- error... error... host is not a virgin. Modifying Great Sage to fit host's abilities. Ding. Great Sage has been modified to Advisor."
I blinked, shaking my head like a dog shedding water. Did I just have a fucking stroke? "You guys hear that?"
I shook my head. "Never mind. You were saying, about the slime?"
Jake blinked, then launched back into his spiel. "Right, so he's practically invincible. Once he..."
I let him ramble, my mind wandering. An AI sidekick and the power to learn anything... sounded like a protagonist package, all right. But where was the style? The pizzazz?
"Nah," I cut in. "You want a real powerhouse, you gotta look at Satoru Gojo. Or Ryomen Sukuna."
"Oh come on," Sarah scoffed. "Gojo's strong, but he's not unbeatable. Put him up against Naruto or Goku and he'd be toast."
"Bullshit," I fired back. "Gojo's got his infinity shit. He can literally make himself untouchable. What's Naruto gonna do, talk-no-jutsu him to death?"
In my head, another ding. A flicker of blue energy danced across my palm, there and gone in an instant. What the actual fuck?
"You're both wrong," Liam chimed in. He'd been quiet till now, content to clean his gun as the rest of us nerded out. "If we're talking OP, it's gotta be the isekai or gamer protags. Sung Jin Woo, Anos Voldigoad, Rimuru, Ainz... they're on a whole 'nother level."
I opened my mouth to argue, but Kim beat me to it. "Please, half those guys are only OP because they got reincarnated with cheat skills. Where's the honor in that?"
"Honor?" Jake snorted. "Who cares about honor when you can have a harem of hot demon chicks?"
The debate dissolved into chaos, voices rising, insults flying. I leaned back, grinning as Sarah put Jake in a headlock for some comment about 'the power of oppai'.
Then it hit me again. Ding. A rush of heat in my blood, visions of twisted flesh and mountains of corpses. The curse techniques of Sukuna, flooding my mind in a tide of forbidden knowledge.
I staggered, catching myself on the wall. The soldiers were too wrapped up in their argument to notice. Hey. You alive in there?
Silence.
Yo, discount HAL 9000. Speak up if you can hear me.
Still nothing. Not even a whisper.
I shrugged. Probably just my imagination playing tricks. God knows it wouldn't be the first time.
Liam piped up from his corner, his voice cutting through the chatter like a knife. "Yo, real talk. If you got reincarnated into an anime world, would you try to become the strongest? Or would you just fade into the background like some rando NPC?"
The question caught me off guard. If I could start over... if I had a second shot at life, with all the power and potential of an anime protagonist...
"Fuck fading into the background," Jake said with a snort. "If I got isekai'd, I'd milk that shit for all it's worth. Grind all the skills, score all the waifus, become the biggest swinging dick in the land. What's the point of a fantasy if you're not living out your wildest dreams, right?"
"I dunno, man," Sarah countered, her voice pensive. "Sounds kind of exhausting, always chasing after power. And for what? Just to prove you're top dog? Nah, give me a cozy little slice-of-life adventure. I'd be living my best cottagecore gay life, tending my crops."
"Okay, but consider: magic battles." Jake mimed firing off a kamehameha. "You're telling me you wouldn't want to be out there slinging spells and punching gods in the dick? Where's your sense of adventure, Sar-bear?"
Sarah flipped him the bird, but there was a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. "Some of us have aspirations beyond the next power-up, Jakeykins."
As they bickered back and forth, I retreated into my own headspace, worrying at Liam's question like a dog with a bone.
What would I do, if given the chance to start anew in a world of boundless potential?
The answer rose up from the depths of my psyche, dark and inevitable as gravity. I'd claw my way to the top of the food chain. I'd seize every scrap of power I could get my hands on and wield it like a cudgel, reforging the world in my image.
What was the point of a second chance if you weren't going to grab it by the throat and throttle every last drop of potential from it?
Ding.
The chime sounded in my head again, louder this time, more insistent. A flicker of phantom knowledge danced at the edges of my consciousness, tantalizing and taunting in equal measure.
I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry as the implications sank in. These strange new abilities, the whispers of an "Advisor" in my head...
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
Sirens shattered the night, a piercing wail that drilled right into the primal lizard-brain. I was moving before the echoes faded, pistols leaping into my hands, feet pounding across the blood-slick ground.
"Contact left!" Liam's voice, tight with adrenaline and terror. "Multiple hostiles, closing fast!"
I heard the rattle of gunfire, the meaty thwack of rounds hitting flesh. Screams, wet and ragged and choked with blood. A man gurgled his last breath over the comms and my hands tightened on my pistols, finger caressing the trigger.
"Fall back!" I roared, my voice raw in my throat. "Jake, Sarah, cover the retreat! Liam, Kim, on me! We hold the line!"
They moved like they'd been drilled, leapfrogging back in tight pairs, laying down covering fire as they went. I felt a surge of fierce pride through the gut-clenching fear. My guys. My responsibility.
And I'd be damned if I let these motherfuckers have them without a fight.
The enemy boiled out of the treeline, a seething mass of fatigues and gun-metal. Hard men with cold eyes, moving with the brutal efficiency of elite killers.
Mercenaries. Just like us. Poor dumb bastards, just trying to make a living in this cold, heartless meat-grinder of a world.
Sucked to be them, though. They were standing between me and mine. Only one way that could end.
I breathed out, slow and steady, letting the world fall away. The screams, the blood, the pounding of my own heart - all of it faded to white noise. There was only the target, the trigger, and the space between heartbeats.
I brought my guns up, thumbed off the safeties. Inhaled. Fired.
The first merc dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, a neat hole drilled right through his forehead. Even as he fell, I was tracking to the next target, finger squeezing smooth and easy. One shot, one kill. Just like old Sarge taught me.
Beside me, Liam and Kim were laying down a withering barrage, assault rifles chattering like angry rattlesnakes. I saw men crumple and fall, shredded by the hail of lead. But more kept coming, pouring out of the shadows like a tide of black-clad death.
"Frag out!" Kim's voice, high and tight. The sharp clatter of the grenade leaving her hand, the dull crump of the explosion. Dirt and bodies fountained into the air, spinning lazily in the smoke-choked night.
A flicker of movement in the corner of my eye. I spun, guns barking, just as the merc lunged from the shadows behind Liam, knife raised to strike.
Too slow. Too fucking slow.
The blade punch into Liam's back, struck sparks from his body armor. He grunted, stumbled, rifle falling from suddenly nerveless fingers.
I put two in the merc's chest, watched him crumple like a broken doll. Liam turned to look at me, his eyes wide and shocked behind the visor of his helmet.
"Dante..." Blood bubbled from his lips, black in the guttering firelight. "I..."
He crashed to his knees, coughed wetly. I caught him as he fell, eased him down to the blood-soaked earth.
"I got you, brother." My voice sounded thin in my own ears, hollow and distant. "I got you. Just stay with me, okay? Keep those baby blues open."
He tried to smile, his teeth gleaming scarlet. Squeezed my hand with fading strength. "Give 'em hell," he whispered. "For me."
Then he shuddered, just once. And was still.
I crouched there, numb, blood cooling on my hands. Felt something in my chest, in my soul, splinter and crack.
"Dante!" Kim's scream, ragged with desperation. "We have to go! Now!"
I looked up, saw the mercs closing in. dozens of them, eyes flat and merciless behind the scopes of their guns. No fear there. No hesitation.
They were going to kill us all.
I rose, fingers tightening on my pistols. Felt a strange calm come over me, cold and implacable as a glacier. Clarity, icy and perfect.
These fuckers wanted a one-way ticket to hell? I was more than happy to oblige.
"Kim." My voice was steady, unbearably gentle. "Take Liam. Find Jake and Sarah. Get to the evac point."
"What?" She stared at me, uncomprehending. "Dante, no! We can't leave y-"
"You can." I was already turning, facing down the oncoming horde. "You will."
A shuddering breath. The rasp of her rifle sliding from suddenly limp fingers. "Dante..."
"Go." I rolled my shoulders, staring down death with a grin tugging at my lips. "I'll buy you time."
Her footsteps, receding into the distance. The soft crackle of flames. The crunch of boots on broken glass.
Then they were on me, and there was no more time for thinking.
I moved like I'd never moved before, pistols an extension of my will, my hate, my killing rage. I was vengeance, I was death incarnate. For Liam. For all the good men and women we'd lost, all the wasted lives ground to bloody pulp in the uncaring gears of this endless fucking war.
I killed. And killed. And killed. The slide of my pistols ratcheted back on empty magazines, smoking in the chill night air. I let them fall, snatched replacements from the holsters of the fallen, never breaking stride.
They fell before me like wheat before the scythe, crumpling and twitching and screaming. Blood splashed hot across my face, my hands, soaked into my fatigues until I was drenched in it, reeking of iron and cordite.
And still they came, an endless tide of faceless killers, as if the very shadows were spitting them forth. I felt myself falter, felt my strength beginning to flag. Felt the cold creep of exhaustion, of inevitability, of a death too long denied.
Only human, after all. Just meat and bone and blood, struggling against the dark.
I stumbled over the corpse of a fallen merc, caught myself on a knee gone suddenly weak. Felt the muzzle of a rifle press cold and hard against the back of my skull.
"End of the line, hero." The merc's voice was flat, dispassionate. As if he were commenting on the weather, instead of holding a man's life in his hands.
I barked a laugh, tasting blood on my tongue. "Joke's on you, asshole," I rasped. "I was never a hero."
A pause. The barest hesitation. "Why, then? Why throw your life away for them?"
I thought of Jake and Sarah, their eyes wide and terrified in mud-streaked faces. Kim screaming my name as she dragged Liam's broken body to safety. All the lives hanging in the balance, teetering on the knife's edge of my defiance.
"Because fuck you," I whispered. "That's why."
The merc grunted. I felt his finger tighten on the trigger. Closed my eyes, pictured the merciless stars wheeling in the vault of heaven.
Funny. I'd always thought it would hurt more.
I was almost disappointed when the bullet punched through my skull. Just a sharp, bright flare of pain, there and gone in an instant.
Then the darkness rose up, as warm and welcome as a lover's embrace, and I let myself fall into its waiting arms.