Two Times, One Sword (Closed)

[foodforpigs]

The zombie monstrosity charged at them head first on all fours, roaring with its large bloody mouth. The beast caused tremors as it charged, shaking the ground underneath the two warrior's feet. Yori and Hotaru attempted to run from the charge. The undead monster, launching itself by pounding the ground with its gigantic hands, quickly closed the distance like a speeding semi, its mouth open and oozing with blood. It chomped at the air as the two warriors desperately weaved out of the way of its grabs and chomping mouth. Hotaru threw fireballs behind her; some had hit its torso, but the charge of the beast remained unhindered, plowing through pillars of stone like they were nothing. A putrid stink emanated from where the fire hissed against oozy flesh. The hulking monster smashed the ground again, causing an additional tremor that caused Hotaru to stumble. It was enough for the beast to get a grip on Hotaru, who instinctively lit up as a pillar of flame, immediately searing the bulbous flesh around her. The beast waved her around in the air, then smashed her repeatedly on the ground in an attempt to put out the flame, still keeping its grip strong with the remaining muscles still attached to its bones.

Yori made a quick stop turn, and drew his blade. He charged at the beast and watched as Hotaru squirmed against the grip which started to crush her again. Her fire was burning at the flesh, but the yellow pus that comprised the flesh was starting to reform quicker than the rate in which she could burn it - regeneration! Yori ducked under the large creature's reaching hand, making an upward slash, severing the zombie's clenching hand from its body. Hotaru, however, continued to wrangle with the severed arm, as the stub of the cut also started to grow, forming already part of a new shoulder and torso. The zombie turned its attention to Yori now, who after his pass had his back turned. The original zombie beast's remaining part of his arm built up pus at its shoulder and by clenching its chest, shot the bundle of yellow pus as though its stubby arm had been converted into a rocket launcher. It hit right at Yori's back, and Yori fell. He rolled into a kneeling position as the beast charged at Yori. There was no running this time.

There was still injustice in this world. Yori had been sent back in time for a purpose. Now all that he had done was starting to unravel. He had saved the life of an enemy, and was trying to do so again. He understood the why beyond letting emotions get the better of him. He thought of Yoko, who had betrayed him, but who had also been redeemed, then of himself, once the right hand man of a corrupt organization. He refused to die again, not until the monster known as Fury had been defeated. In a cry of rage Yori slashed at the charging undead beast with both its arms outstretched to grab him; parts of the arms fell to the ground like slabs of stone. His sword glowed in white light as it pierced the head clean through its open mouth. The body collapsed, and subsequently crumbled to dust. Before the head of the second flesh golem could fully form a head, Yori charged to stab it, and it too crumbled to dust.

"I had it under control." said Hotaru coyly, wiping off stinky steaming zombie flesh from her arms and legs. She let the fire burn from within her to "pop" back into position the metal that had been squeezed by the undead monster, much like a boiler room tank that had dimples on the surface.
Yori waved out the light of his sword as though it was a flame, but knew it wasn't a flame. It had been the blessing of his sword that saved his life.
"You're probably right." Yori replied. Hotaru was no damsel in distress. The encounter might have driven her to reach that Unstoppable Force form for which she had no conscious control.
"You're damn right I'm right!" Hotaru rebuked.
"Next time I'll let you handle it." Yori scoffed.
"I'm only keeping you alive as fodder; you know that right? The Crypt is a meat grinder. Just don't get in my way."
"I won't."
"Good."
"Good!"

 

[Tone 6th]

She saw an opening and took it. With the skeletons out of her way she leaped off the building and landed with a graceful *thud*. The dark haired girl dashed into the crypt, and at the same time her possible death.

​

Just past the entrance all light was flushed from the room, except the few flickering torches that lit the hallways for the massive grave. Half decaying bodies were placed in craved sections of the wall. The smell was enough to make a normal person pass out. There was a sense of death that hung in the air, even Neza had to admit the place was creepy.

"Well isn't this place just-" *Click* She felt the ground under her foot press inward *SHING!*

Spikes shot out of the ground at a lightning pace skewering one of her legs. "Damn it all!" he yelled in anger. She pulled her leg off the spike with small squishing sounds, and a small trail of black "blood" ran down her leg. She scrambled to her feet, and luckily there was no heavy damage. She jumped over the trap, and continued on. The depths of the darkness seemed to go on forever, Neza conjured a torch. She found herself feet deep in corpses "What is this?" she looked into the darkness. "Who's there! Show yourself!" she shouted. Slowly eight glowing eyes started looking back at her.
​

​

"What the fuck!" her eyes went wide at the size of the arachnid. It hissed at her, venom dripping from it's hangs.​

 

[foodforpigs]

She waved the conjured torch in front of her. The spider didn't flinch like she had expected, instead shifting only a little to gauge its prey. It skittered forward, closing in on Neza. It didn't charge at Neza like she had expected; its pace and purpose were slow, pressing its advantage discreetly. The spider spat a glob of sticky spider web soaked in acid. Neza used her tail to pick up a corpse as a shield. The corpse's head and upper body was wrapped tightly in the goop. There was also a distinct snapping sound of spine vertebrae snapping, and this was even after Neza presumed rigor mortus would've set for her meat shield.

Neza could feel a tingling at the back of her skull. She heard another shot spit out of the spider's mouth, but the cover obscured her from seeing what it was. Without warning, she had been pulled forward by a great force, and as she flew forward above her impromptu shield, she saw that the spider had tethered the corpse to a thick shaft of webbing. She pierced the ceiling with her tail. Had she continued in the arc that the spider had directed, she would've landed right in the spider's gaping mandible.
--

Hotaru and Yori walked together only in the loosest sense. They were distant from each other, walking in tandem so that neither fell back a short distance to back stab the other. There was a patent distrust between them, and Yori couldn't stop thinking about his sister. He had killed his sister, so how did this golem get the command codes? Yori wondered if Gin had the magic or technology required to salvage that.

"I should've known." Yori muttered. "There's absolutely no low that Gin and his forces would go to for their own ends."
"What are you blathering about now?"
"Gin defiled my sister's grave."
"You're the one that put her there."
"I didn't have a choice!" Yori yelled. Yori thought about the timeline. He imagined how much damage he had done just by being here. He imagined Ayako going on a rampage, and that was even worse, or even joining forces with Gin 'for fun'.
"Your sibling concept is really fucked up for you to think killing your sister was a good thing to do."
Yori stopped in his tracks, and so did Hotaru. Yori had his hand clasped around his sword hilt about his waist, but the sword remained in its scabbard.
"It was likely a one way path, anyway. A crazy man making a connection where there was none. Your 'sister' never thought of you as a brother."
"Don't you dare pretend to know what was between us."
"You just don't want to admit that I'm right."

 

[Tone 6th]

The spider looked confused as to why it's prey had stopped moving, and was now stuck in the ceiling. Unfortunately for her that meant she was open to attack. The spider shot a web ball and it was aimed right for her torso. Neza pushed off the ceiling, but the web clipped one of her ankles. When she landed she could hear the acid eating away at her metal "Fuck really!" she could take getting stabbed, but acid eating away at her beautiful that was the last straw. "You want play hard, then let's play hard!" she balled up her and they stared to glow a golden yellow.

​

"You took a chunk out of me, so let me return the favor." she knocked her fists together and smiled. "Calibrating fighting style for weight value.... calibration complete... Fighting style calibrated... enemy data analyzed... best of luck Miss Neza" Neza's system alerted. "Oh yeah this is going to be fun!" she laughed.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I have had enough of you!" Yori drew his blade "I should have killed you when I had the chance."

"Oh waaaah. Hey look the truth hurts." Hotaru's hands went a blaze. "Trust me the feeling is-" she looked over Yori's shoulder to and saw a tail she knew all to well hurry into the crypt. "Sorry tin head, but I have no more time to play with you." she flared up her fists and blasted toward Yori, and doing so with a kiss. She rushed into the entrance and continued into the mass grave.

Yori sheathed his blade and sighed "Now what?"

"Yori? By Amaterasu is that you!" a voice called from behind him. He turned to see an old friend "Jiro!" the biggest smile grew on his face.​

 

[foodforpigs]

Neza weaved past shot projectiles, calculating their paths now before they were even launched from the spider's mouth. It started to skitter backward. Neza could feel the tingling at the back of her head try and envelope her mind now. Each punch from her gauntlets whooshed though the air menacingly as she laughed. The spider screamed when a punch hit several of its eyes and in a retaliatory move sprayed acid from its mouth in a cone. Neza ducked under the acid cone and clocked it under its jaw. The spider lashed out again but its bites were interrupted by cold and sharp steel. The acid that dripped from its mouth didn't erode the gauntlets; the gauntlets had been proofed to allow the acid to slide off its sides. Whatever did erode quickly regenerated at Neza's will.

Neza's one leg was especially messed up, and though she moved with killing intent, the spider's full retreat was opening the distance between them again. Neza threw metal javelins at it to keep the pressure. Despite their force the javelins were either swatted away by a leg or were deflected against the spiders' hard carcass. The enveloping feeling was continuing to press on inside her skull, worse than a fever.

"Had enough already?" Neza said mockingly. "You tried to bite more than you could chew and now you're going to die!"

The spider skittered out of the hallway where it had been picking at leftover meals into a much more open area, but as it did so a hurled spear got through the spiders' swat and it pierced the top part of its mouth right into its brain. Neza dragged herself to it and walked over the corpse, triumphant. The heavy gauntlets had faded when Neza walked out of the hallway, and she was met with a large cavern laced with gigantic spider webs spanning the area like tarpaulin for a sports stadium. The feeling in her mind was starting to fade, as Neza scanned the area for signs of any others through the canopy of webs. There were stone walking paths that led in different directions not covered by web, invitations for death. She focused on the feeling more clearly now, and knew she felt it before, at the hands of the book demons. She had also felt it when Waru mix taped her memories into the gross version of her return. Most of all, it was what she had felt when she had fought Gin in the meditation room in an attempt to restore the honor stolen from her when he ripped her open and took her heart. Focusing more on the feeling, it became more foreign. It wasn't her fear. It was like an injection from an outside source, and it wasn't working.

I've endured so much of this garbage already since I traveled to this time. I was once naive of fear. Now I am the Nether Animal. I've conquered fear!

Wishing she could conjure better ordinance, Molotov cocktails materialized in her hands, and she started to hurl them at the silky webs. The webs burned slowly from the flame, burning with heavy smoke. Having memorized the initial part of a stone path, she moved as quickly as she could, but she was leaking black oil from her messed up leg. She now used her tail as a third leg, balancing on it as much as she could to put weight off the leg that was damaged. She heard more skittering, lots more. She continued to use the smoke as cover. Now she could feel the same emotion of fear trying to inject itself into Neza's mind, but Neza's soul remained adamant. She guessed that it was how these spiders hunted in such a large area; almost instinctively it was like the spiders measured responses like a kind of sonar, based on the clarity of the foreignness she felt attempting to pierce from the outside.

 

[Tone 6th]

Jiro quickly got off his horse and ran to Yori "By the gods I thought I had lost you!" he gave him a quick hug. "After Yoko..." his smile faded. "Please forgive my foolish sister she was corrupted by the power of the Reaper weapons." he bowed lowly. "Never the less what she did to you was unforgivable, and for that I am very sorry." he said serenely. Yori had never been such a formal apology and wasn't too sure on how to answer.

"She and I were both weak. It was an inconvenience to have my body taken from me, but we both made mistakes. I harbor no ill will towards her or you." Yori offered a smile. He noticed the soldiers "Who are your friends?" he asked.

"They are part of the militia from town. Yori... a battle between Gin's forces and Kissoten's has stared, and the city is right in the middle. We were sent here to help protect the stone, but judging from the huge hole in the gate I'm going to guess Gin's forces are already inside."

"Unfortunately yes, I fought with the one known as Hotaru. She put quite the fight, but in the end I won out. However she got away from me and now she's inside."

"Alright then we will have to cut our pleasantries short. Men dismount and squad up, we're going to take Gin's general out." Jiro commanded. The men dismounted and took position behind their leader. "So you ready to meet another God?" Jiro smiled.

"Hopefully we can leave their home intact this time."

The men started to walk into the crypt.​

 

[foodforpigs]

As the men entered into the crypt, with Yori and Jiro in front, they heard someone scream. It was a high piercing scream, but it didn't repeat. Yori knew the scream to be Hotaru's. Yori felt the urge to suddenly run into the crypt after the scream, but stopped himself. This was the same woman who wanted to use him as fodder for death traps. The group of men walked in a forward direction until the unmistakable sound of grinding stone echoed the hallways each in different directions.

"Did you hear that?" Yori said.
Jiro nodded, and looked behind him to see where his men were. Behind them was a stone wall.
"A self-modulating maze." Yori grumbled. "We don't have time for this."
"I should've known." Jiro agreed. "There are stories of the lost unlucky enough to be in Kissoten's crypts, said to be trapped and buried in by stone. This must be what they meant. Stand back; I'm going to break down the wall."
"That might be what Kissoten wants you to do. It could be a trap."
"We can't afford to be separated. I doubt very much that she wouldn't leave at least a squad or two behind to protect the stone."
"That's true." said Yori. He thought towards his virtual training exercises that involved a concept just like this. In some instances, it was best to stick by the rules of the environment, not to trip any traps or alarms. At other times, the rules were too strict, and had to be broken to complete an objective. "It's your call."

Jiro nodded and pointed two of his fingers at the wall, then curling his fingers to grab. The stone wall started to shake.
"If you're on the other side of the wall, move away from it now!" Jiro yelled.
His curled fingers clutched into a fist and he threw a solid forward jab. The stone wall fractured and then broke into chucks, flying away from the samurai like shrapnel. The pieces, however, were starting to come back together again, as though the stones themselves were magnetic, filling in the out-most parts of the hole that Jiro had just created.
--

Hotaru had narrowly avoided getting squashed. The heavy ceiling had dropped on her while the hallway itself abruptly turned ninety degrees with her on the tile. She had tumbled as a reflex in any direction out of the room, but as she did so, a metal spike shot out from the floor nearly missing her head.

"Neza!" Hotaru called, panicked. "Neza where are you?!"

She saw the smoke coming from the right and followed it. Her eyes widened when she saw the spider corpse that Neza had left behind, with the javelin stuck in its mouth, propping the head upright as the javelin made a wide angle to the ground. When she got into the same cavern that Neza had been carefully crawling in under the thick of the smoke, Hotaru saw lots of smaller spiders come up from the darkness of the cavern below. If the spider at the front was any indication, the rest were likely its brood.

 

[Tone 6th]

To the samurai's shock their men were gone, only cloths and weapons lay beyond the opening. "Let's keep moving, there is nothing we can do for them now." Jiro said with cold eyes. Before they left Jiro said a small prayer for the men, and the two continued into the maze. "So tell me, what was it like being dead? It couldn't have been fun for you." Jiro tried to make small talk.

"Well... you ever been taking a nap in the sunlight, but you know you have to get up and do stuff? A lot like that. This sense of peace, but at the same time the urge to get back to whatever you were doing prior. You're right it wasn't fun, I felt so out of place." Yori explained.

"Well it wasn't you're time to go yet, despite any bright lights you may have seen." Jiro laughed.

"Grrraaahhh." something growled in the distance.

"What was that?" Jiro drew his sword, as did Yori.

Shambling out the darkness came a horrific site. "By Amaterasu herself." Jiro looked on in horror.

​

"Jiro what is that thing?" Yori asked.

"An unholy abomination that must be purged." Jiro ran at the beast and sliced it's head off. The body fell to the ground while the head continued to move. "Foul beast!" Jiro roared and stabbed the head. Blood splatter all of the ground, and up the walls. "One creature shall not stop us." the swordsman said triumphantly. But in the darkness he could here more foot steps and slowly more and more of the undead came down the one end of the corridor. "Perhaps I spoke to soon, run!" he grabbed Yori and the both of them start to run with the undead hot on their heals.
​

 

[foodforpigs]

The two samurai ran through the corridors as more undead started to burst form the left and right of them, as the walls again rotated ahead of them, creating new funnels into the main hallway they were running in. They covered each other as they ran, their blades swinging and stabbing past their torsos and heads. Light bathed their blessed blades as the swarms of undead were quickly executed and turned into dust. The hallway ahead of them suddenly fell out into a bottomless pit; if they were to stop now, the stampede of undead behind them would push them off the edge and plummet downwards into the abyss.

"JUMP!" said Yori. In unison they sheathed their swords, held arms and made their leap as Yori activated his fire rocket boosters to carry them further when more floor tiles ahead started to drop. A wall ahead of them was starting to turn to block their jump path to the other side.

"RAH!" Jiro shouted, throwing his fist forward in the air as they leaped. The thrown fist caused the shifting wall ahead of them to stop mid turn, with a heavy gust of wind that moved so fast that it cut awaiting undead ambushers on the other side to be pushed backwards. They made quick work of these, when Yori felt something like wet rope tug at his cyborg arm. From the other side of the bottomless pit trap, one of the abominations had its long tongue around it. The sides of the tongue were jagged; the tongue cut into the arm as it started to constrict around it. Following that, another abomination got its leg with its supernaturally long tongue. The mindless swarm behind this abomination continued its charge, pushing the abominations that had Yori tethered down into the pit.

Yori's ground pounders broke the stone floor at his feet. As gravity pulled, the tongues cut even deeper into him, like a Chinese finger trap. While Yori heated up and drew his sword to cut the tongues, Jiro looked upward and saw that the ceiling was slowly shifting down towards them.

 

[Tone 6th]

The spiders were the size of small dogs, each hissing more loud than the next. One jumped at the flame dancer and she punched it in mid air. It hit the ground with a wet pop, but more only took its place. "I hate spiders!" she said in disgust. They came at her in groups, but she moved to quickly for even one of the acid fanged beasts to land a hit. "Enough!" she yelled. Flames grew in Hotaru's hands, as she began to suck all the fire in the room into her palms. She slammed her hands together *BOOM!* and a wave of fire engulfed the entire cave. The brood was set ablaze, the water cooking out of them so the popped and cracked under the heat. "Fucking hate spiders!" she yelled as she started to climb up a a staircase.


It wasn't long before she saw Neza standing with her back tuned. "Thanks for abandoning me back there you bitch! Oh and your brother says hi." she rolled her eyes. "Hey did you hear me? Yori is right on our tail, we need to keep moving." she grabbed Neza's arm.

"Don't touch me traitor!" Neza jerked her hand away.

 

[foodforpigs]

"Taitor?! You abandoned me!" Hotaru rebuked.
"I was carrying out my mission while you wasted time playing with Yori. You were supposed to kill him."
"I was about to kill him, but then his friend showed up!"
"You also speak as though Yori's my brother. He's not. That's your undoing. You expressed familiarity with him."
"The hell? I said that out of spite!"
"Were the questions you asked of Waru out of spite too? How you wanted to get to know Yori better, to kill him? What garbage! All you needed to know to kill him was that he's a man that can be killed like any other!"

"That conversation you eavesdropped is not your concern!"
"It is! Last time you 'fought' Yori, you only lost an arm. Nobody just 'loses an arm' to Yori when they're beaten."
"Look who's talking. Yori had been completely severed from his fire powers and you still couldn't take him. You got away with everything, except, EXCEPT, the fucking Aqwuis Stone! Should I mention if it wasn't for that failure, Gin's last stone would be the Husk Stone?"
"I was against two gods, dammit. Two times you fight against the same man. The first time was with a superior army of golems against crab men. The second time it's like you had it all staged at the beginning. Yori, meeting you all the way out here? That can't just be a fucking coincidence now can it? You really think that Yori and Jiro would inexplicably go separate ways from each other, that Yori would've worn that ridiculous cloak, swung that unwieldy scythe like a brute, and completely changed fighting styles if not just for the sake of an act?"
"I don't know what their fucking plan is!"
"You do! You chose that spot when we jumped from Gin's airship. I thought it was for tactical purposes. All those stones were a marker for a meeting spot. It can't be coincidence."
"You have no proof! None! I saw Kissoten's army and landed to not give away our spot."
"Then you put on a fucking light show in the sky. You weren't fighting with Yori. You were dancing."
"Fuck you."
"My sensors picked up some strange sounds. Can you guess what it is?"
Neza's playback section played back a 'doppler effect' version of a song that played during the battle. It slowly formatted into listenable music, though it was faint.
"Music." Neza said. "Yori played music while you two were doing it. What a fool. He thought I was dead. I, of course, would be the only one able to record sounds in such a way in this era, from such a distance at the crypt. Other methods would have to use wet clay pottery or some shit like that."
"You bitch." Hotaru sneered. "You gave me the codes."
"What codes?" Neza questioned. "Do you really expect Gin to believe a future warrior would have such an exploitable weakness in his system? Any rational person would've just made Yori bleed from the inside with sonic shockwaves with that kind of power."

 

[Tone 6th]

"Don't talk down to me! Who do you think you are!" Hotaru gritted her teeth.

Neza walked over to just behind Hotaru and whispered "I'm the one you shouldn't have crossed, I'm the one you humiliated, I'm the one who will replace you, and I'm the one who is far superior to. "

Rage over flowed from Hotaru's core "FUCK YOU!" her fist went blaze, and back handed Neza with outstanding force. It was enough to leave a char mark on Neza's cheek. "I'M THE ONE WHO IS BETTER NOT YOU!" she roared.

"ENOUGH!" Gin's voice boomed in her mind. "Hotaru you are finished, you have utterly failed your mission. You will be dealt with accordingly!"

"Master wait no I-" and in a flash Hotaru was gone.

Neza stood up and smiled while wiping the blood from her cheek "I told you fire begets fire."
-------------------------------------

It wasn't long before Neza found herself in yet another corridor, she could bearly see her hand in front of her face. "I'm so over this place. If it isn't death traps taking a chunk out of me it's the undead." she sighed.

*Whomp* She ran into something in front of her and it wasn't a wall. She moved her hands along the object and it felt like a body. She squinted and tried to adjust her eyes "What the!" she gasped. She could bearly make it out but it seemed to be a naked, pale, featureless body. She pushed past it only to find herself in a huge room. The air was cold and damp. The room smelled if decay.

Again Neza focused her eyes only to find the room was full of the white bodies "What is this place?" an uneasy feeling creeped through her body.

*Hisssssss* a noise came from behind her.

 

[foodforpigs]

Yori's blade heated up with bright flames, but by the time that happened two more tongues binded his other arm and leg. He struggled as his mechanical rotors went into overclock mode, in order to move his sword to cut. He tried to summon up fire to engulf himself with fire, but the fight with Hotaru had drained him. Jiro meanwhile was slashing down zombies from behind Yori, impaling those that trailed with stone spikes the jettisoned from the dungeon walls.

"There's too many!" Jiro shouted. "The ceilings in front and above us and coming down. We don't have much time!"

Yori heard the sound of the lowering ceiling as well. He looked up towards the ceiling that was coming down, then towards the bottomless pit. He then looked across the pit, where the undead horde on the other side of the bottomless pit were pushing those that were tethering him. The ones tethering him were struggling to maintain ground.

"I'm going to fall!" Yori shouted.

Jiro cut off the advancing forces coming his way by raising the stone floor up to meet the lowering ceilings of the other tiles. The ceiling above them was low enough they had to crouch. Jiro patted Yori's shoulder.

"Believe in Amaterasu. Jump!"

The two samurai bravely jumped into the pit. The ceiling that had been above them suddenly dropped the rest of the way. The impact from the sheer weight of that ceiling boomed like thunder; it would've crushed them. While they were falling, Jiro deftly cut the tongues that bound Yori during a somersault. While Yori was falling, he felt a sudden loss strike at his core. It felt like part of the fire he felt was suddenly gone. The first metaphor that appeared in his mind was that of two torches, contributing to the same fire, and one of those torches has been removed. The void at his chest felt stronger than everywhere else. There were two fires burning there.

The two samurai landed on something squishy; with a splashy splat, the two couldn't tell what they were covered with. It was pitch dark and whatever they landed in stank.

"Careful." whispered Yori. "Methane. Breathe shallow."
"Miasma?" guessed Jiro. He had no idea what methane meant, being a chemistry term from the future.
"Close enough. No fires. Might ignite."

 

[Tone 6th]

Slowly Neza was bathed in a eerie bright green glow. Something wet and sticky oozed down her shoulder "What the fuck?" she whispered as a jolt of dear shot down her spine. Slowly she turned around, and what she saw terrified her. Letting out a shriek Neza scrambled away from the wall.

​

The monster screeched at her, and dove into the mountain of pale bodies. The room was dark again, and Neza didn't like that at all. Then, the room started to shake and a chunk of the pile tore off forming an orb.
​

​

The orb was huge, taking up a third of the room, Neza couldn't believe here eyes. "Uh Uh Scan for bio signs." she panicked. "Running scan... ocular senors damaged can not complete scan." her system informed. "What do you mean damaged I-!" she remembered the blow to the face Hotaru gave her "Damn her!" Neza yelled. "Night vision then!" she ordered. "All ocular functions are offline, sorry Miss Neza but only standard view is functional." her system informed. "FUCK!" she yelled, but now the orb orb of dead bodies was coming at her. It made a strange low humming, and she could see a faint green light coming from the center. "F... Fine I'll take you on!" she yelled and a katana appeared in her hand.

Suddenly a huge tendril shot out of the bodies and tightly wrapped itself around Neza's stomach. It whipped her against a wall, and instantly she felt a small whole in her back "What the fuck is that!" she yelled. "Your stingers Miss." her system answered. "My what... how long have I had those!" the monster squeezed harder, and the fighter's frame made a popping noise . "Doesn't matter!" the stingers came over her shoulders and sunk into the beasts flesh. "RAHHHHHHH!" the tendril retreated back into the ball of corpses, leaving Neza to fall flat on her face. "I need a real weapon. I'm so sick of this primitive garbage!" she dug deep and got back to her feet. "I need some real tech." she closed her eyes and focused "Here goes." she whispered. Another tendril lunged out at her *VVVVV!* There was a flash of red light and then the huge tentacle was on the floor still wriggling. "YES! FUCK YES! I DID IT!" Neza cheered, and in her hand a beam sword.

 

[foodforpigs]

The light of her red beam sword shone brightly as it cut through another group of tentacles shot at her. Bright globs of hot plasma from the concentrated blade sputtered upon each successive cut. It wasn't the clean, cauterizing strike Neza had expected; the putrid smell of flesh became more repugnant as the plasma continued to cook at flesh and stone ground like lava. Neza sweated from the waste heat that her beam sword was emitting. The pulpous mound of flesh was steadily sliding along the stone floor, over a sickly mixture of bile and blood, excreted from where the bodies were ground together by a internal convection process at the core of the collective's being.

As the spherical mound of bodies shifted, it started to curve more around Neza, learning as Neza used the remaining two-thirds of the room to advance and retreat like a fencer parrying ahead of her. Now the bodies were closing in. While the wall was becoming thinner as the mound spread, it also started to tower over her menacingly. Now the gross guttural sounds it was making were coming from all directions at Nezas front. As the monstrosity began to corner Neza, Neza could more clearly see the bodies of those that made up the creature, warped like wet clay, of mushy eye-less faces that muscle no longer bound together. Neza could see crying and screaming on the faces of the dead.

The mound swung forward in vigorous might, toppling over her like a tidal wave. When Neza thrust her beam sword into the incoming pile of flesh, the beam started to diffract wildly. Plasma again started to erupt from the top as the beam started to become unstable from the crushing weight. Before the body could reach the hilt, Neza turned off the plasma sword. If it wasn't for that, her hand would've melted from plasma bubbling over the hilt like melting ice cream. If it touched her hand, her hand would be gone.

She could feel her arm go numb as she turned on the beam sword again, the pile of bodies threatening to crush her under its incredible weight. Using her strong scorpion tail as a spring, she threw herself towards her left side, where the wall was attempting to close in, but would be the thinnest from the corpse wall's center. She furiously slashed X's into the side, cutting herself away from the main focus where bodies were falling on top of where she stood; the sphere was attempting to engulf her so that she was inside, to grind and crush her like the other bodies. So many bodies, unexceptional, naked, forgotten.

Her rage took over as more of her body grew numb from feeding her inner energy into the blade, against the screaming pain of her impaled leg. She cut a desperate swath through the bodies, closing her eyes partway through the path because blood was running down her forehead, threatening to blind her. When she emerged to the other side, gasping, she ran to the other side of the circular room. She opened her eyes against the pain of Hotaru's 'parting gift', only to see that the sphere was still as large as ever. Sure there were a few bodies cast to the side, but overall, there were much few bodies than she expected. However, there was a different blade in her hand. She had wondered why, in her desperate attempt to cut a path for herself, that no plasma touched her as the path she cut seemed to close back in on her like regenerating tissue. It was a thin blade, and while it had a simple color of stone as the base, a light shone from it.

It's a Moon Blade.

Neza knew the voice, but couldn't believe it. It was Mei. What the hell? Why was this a secret before?

No time! Swing the damn thing!

She swung the blade angrily, for it wasn't her beam sword. It sent out a large crescent wave of pulsing energy at the beast. It cut through the monster cleanly; it screeched in pain. She firmly clenched her new blade, and let it oscillate up and down. It was well balanced and felt good in her hand. Neza grinned.

 

[Tone 6th]

The darkness was unending, and the smell was staggering. Both warriors had to filter out the smell with their kimonos. "Jiro I trust Amaterasu and all, but she really put us in a shitty place." Yori winced at the smell.

"Agreed, this is a rather awful place to be right now, but those wretched monsters have stopped their pursuit."

The sludge and muck beneath them started to rise first to the ankle, then to the knee. As the turned a corner the corridor lit up, bloated dead bodies where lit up with a grotesque dull yellow. "Bioluminescence..." Yori whispered.

"The lights of the dead." Jiro whispered. "Yori I sense immense energy here, we have to be careful."

"I know, I can feel it too."

*Booooup* The sound of water rippling echoed off the walls. Then slowly the ripples of the waves got closer and closer together as time went on. Both warriors drew their blades, they could here something crawling through the water and it was fast. Just as the space between ripples was nonexistent they stopped. The two stared into the darkness hoping to find what is was they were fighting.

"AHHHHHH!" an ear piercing scream came from above them. The two looked up and gasped in horror "Move!" Jiro shouted and pushed Yori out of the way.

*BOOM!* The monstrosity came crashing down to the ground, sending muck everywhere. "AHHHHHHHH!" it screamed again.

 

[foodforpigs]

Neza swung the Moon Blade again; another crescent shaped wave shot and cut at the large ball of corpses, leaving another large gash in its wake, forming an X with the previous open cut. It wasn't as deep as the initial cut, however, which had cut through the beast. The beast ball of corpses was already learning, compressing and making strong creases with itself; Neza saw as a thick line of bone underneath the first layer of flesh. The X cut revealed the creature on the inside, the bloody wounded mass of human bodies carved into the shape of a blossoming flower, revealing a pearl inside. The creature inside the whole thing was a brain-like ball with pincer-like tentacles attached to it.

Columns of blood jutted from the internal edges of where Neza's crescent blades had cut quickly, just before the sphere of bodies was beginning to fall apart like petals of that same flower, like strings of saliva from an open mouth. White calcium bubbled along with the new columns of blood; jagged bones jutted out like teeth. The columns of blood were starting to coagulate; at the edges where Neza's crescent cuts were the shallowest, the wounds were starting to close. The corpse-flower had been sculpted in a hideous face, with the pulpy center like a tongue.

Compelled to act upon the rare opportunity to destroy what had to be the central control system, Neza leaped towards the center of the many-being, slashing mercilessly to let loose more crescent shaped blasts at the sphere, intent on turning the face-flower in scraps of flesh. The tongue-center opened its pincers as they glowed in a green light. Green energy beams shot from them like machine gun fire. These beams, while shot fast, also had frightening precision, as each of Neza's aerial dodges became pinned and she was shot two times: hit her sword arm and one of her legs, immobilizing them. The Moon Blade fell.

Neza plummeted like a stone into the mouth that was now about to close in on her. She landed in the opening against pulpous flesh and bone. All she could see now were corpses piling in on her. The dim light from the outside was being extinguished as she was being surrounded. She could feel herself being crushed in the pile, blood and bile clouding her vision even more, coating her. The weight prevented her screams. Her stingers furiously stabbed behind her to make whatever was behind her a pulp, to soften it and turn it into mush; her back became covered in flesh with the consistency of pig slop. The crushing weight would continue to press inward and ground her; oil was now spilling from her joints as each of her limbs were pulled along the strong convection of the bodies surrounding her.

She focused most of her remaining inner strength into her scorpion tail, which tightly held the moon blade in its pincer grasp. The energy of the moon blade burned the flesh around it, making the mass around it looser. In a swift somersault, she cut a circle from within the sphere. In combination with her remaining hand, back pincers and the Moon Blade wielding tail, she bore out a hole for herself. Chunks of flesh were thrown aside as she cut corpses from above with her tail, which were closing in to crush in from above. More blood showered her body and soon the blood was starting to drown her. She swam blinded in the swirling chaos as the bodies continued to shift and shriek as Neza dug and swam. Though her eyes were closed, she suddenly saw a green light shine through her eyelids. Without hesitation, she grabbed at the throat of the tentacle. She could hear the pincer snap close to her, and the green light continued to build up. Her hand, her energy, was stopping the green light at the throat. She heard another screech; the damn thing refused to die. She held onto the tentacle like a tether. She fed energy back into the throat, causing the green light to burst away from her.

She swam into the opening. She knew this to be the inner chamber, a spherical pool of vat-blood, rich in oxygen. There was the brain-beast in the center because Neza could see through her eyelids several green spots, still and unwavering, increasing in intensity. Her Moon Blade, still held by her scorpion tail, pointed down above her like a true extension of a scorpion about to strike. The sword charged in purplish light. The green lasers fired at Neza; a much larger purple beam fired from the blade, dissolving the weaker beams. The brain-beast screeched and exploded. The sphere around Neza collapsed. The corpses near the bottom splatted against the hardness of the stone, cushioning her fall. The remaining energy from the sword either melted or burst bloated corpses raining upon her, causing more blood and gore to shower upon her. The paralysis from the green beams still hurt like hell, but she could begin to move her limbs. She stood up feebly like a newborn baby giraffe that hadn't developed leg muscles. She eyes were still closed shut as dark red crimson blood soaked her from head to toe. Flesh slop covered most of her back, and intestines draped on her body like tinsel on a evergreen tree.

 

[Tone 6th]

The monster was huge taking up nearly all of the corridor. It rushed at them with great speed despite it's size.

"Yori behind me!" Jiro called out. Jiro stabbed the wall of the corridor and a huge rock pillar shot from the wall. The beast ran full forced into the thick pillar, and collapsed top the ground. The wall Jiro stabbed was quick to reject the weapon almost like it pushed it itself. "That was easy..." smiled.

"ahhhhh.... AHHHHHHH!" the beast scrambled to it's feet, and out of it's daze. It swiped at Jiro with it's massive scythe like arm, only to narrowly miss him. "Yori neither of us have the kind of strength for a good defense. We need this monstrosity out of our way."

"AHH!" The monster shot a large ball of green goop at the two. *BEEP BEEP BEEP* Yori's sensors caused him to reacted pulling them both the ground. The goop landed on a close by rock and instantly dissolved it, leaving nothing but a gray puddle.

"Oh great and it spits acid." Yori mumbled as he got up. "Well if we can't defend then we need to attack!" the samurai drew his blade and rushed at the monster. His was fast enough to get get up close, and cut clean through one of the monster's arm. The claw landed with a thud. Blood gushed over everything Jiro and Yori included. "Gross." the swordsman tried wiping off the blood, but his gi was already stained.

"AHHHHHHHHH!" the beast screamed, but to the samurai's horror the arm just regrew.

"Shit hacking limbs off won't do anything..."

"Then we blow it up!" Jiro called.

 

[foodforpigs]

Neza couldn't see anything; blood was still in her eyes. Her legs continued to shake as she stumbled trying to walk over bodies, arms outstretched in front of her trying to feel for a wall.

"Mei!" Neza exclaimed. She tried to move faster to find a wall, but this caused her to stumble and fall on top of more corpses. She quickly got up again, moving frantically to find a wall.
"I'm here." Mei assured. Neza felt a presence walking beside her, propping her up with a hand firmly at the sternum of her chest.
Neza gasped 'looking' in all directions, but there was still only darkness.
"It's okay." soothed Mei. "You've won. It's safe now."
Tears were running down Neza's face. The tears were slowly washing the blood from the surface of her eyes.
"You're alive..." Neza uttered. "You're alive!"
"Yep, more than just alive. I feel absolutely jang!"
"Ahah, jang! What do you think? Like my new look? I think it's really jang." Neza rose her arms and swayed them to move around the intestines that draped over her.
"Red really looks good on you, and summoning that red sword was so cool~"
"The Moon Blade's so much better."
"Your design inspired me. That's what matters." Mei replied. "It unlocked a memory lost in death."
"What memory? I have never seen such technology even in the future."
"Moon dancers were the most powerful warriors of my tribe. Their blades drink on the moon, the blood, the passion. It's not something you can book-explain."
"Were you a Moon Dancer, Mei?"
"Ehehehe, nah. Rivals in my tribe sabotaged my image. Convinced the Elder that I didn't have the necessary grace, 'cause I favored the biggest weapons, and wore animal skins like the males did."
"You have the passion."
"It matters not what they though. My tribe lives on, with us. You're a Moon Dancer now!"
"Wouldn't there be some sort of initiation?"
"Already happened. You felled a great beast in the presence of a tribesman with the Moon Blade."
"I see."
"Aren't you happy, Neza?"
"I am." Neza said. "It's just, the mission."
"Well then, we'll just have to celebrate harder when the mission is done, now won't we?"

 

[Tone 6th]

Jiro went over to one of the bloated bodies "We don't have time waste on anymore monsters!" he picked up the body, rotting flesh and blood stained his white Gi, and slung it over his shoulder. "You said these could explode right, well why don't we give our friend the meals he wants!" he started running towards the beast.

"AHHHHH!" the best swung at Jiro, but he nimbly dodged out of the way. Jiro shoved the body in the monsters mouth, and quickly retreated.

"AAHHHHHHAAHHH!" the monster tried to spit up the body with no avail.

"Yori fire!" Jiro ordered.

"But we'll be!"

"Just do it!" he screamed.

"You better have a plan for this!" Yori drew his blade and shot a fireball into the monsters mouth. The fire hit body and then everything burst into flame.

Jiro touched the sewer water with the tip of his blade "Junsai!" The water quickly encapsulated the both of them just before the explosion happened.

BOOM!!!!!!!
​

The entire hallway went up in flames, and the monster was incinerated not even ash remained.​