Shinjuku

  2032 January 21st

  Five vans parked in the city.

  “Jaclyn, what did it feel like in Tartarus’s domain”?

  Yuki walked beside Athena and Jaclyn.

  “What else would you expect hell to be like? I don’t really remember what happened, Eros took over my body the moment I entered the domain”.

  Jaclyn calmly explained.

  She calmly looked at her surroundings.

  Shinjuku was eerily quiet, but the lights were still on, no one stood on the roads and the street lamps still flickered on and off.

  The once crowded and bustling city was empty and dreadful, the tall steel buildings once filled with ads now completely gone.

  Athena squinted her eyes.

  “Where’d everyone go? This isn’t supposed to happen, from what Sayori said, there was supposed to be hundreds of people on the street”.

  Nerissa walked behind them, his back hunched over and eye bags underneath his eyes, a man with completely pale skin and short black hair walked beside him, seemingly as tired of life as Nerissa was.

  Nerissa asked him in a quiet tone.

  “Musashi, what do you want from me? You’re only make me more depressed”.

  Musashi calmly replied with a stern face.

  “This is our job, there are consequences in protecting those who can’t protect themselves, this is the risk in protecting the lives of thousands of others”.

  Tears streamed down Nerissa’s face.

  “And his life didn’t matter? We’re just soldiers with an extra title, sacrificing our lives for the government”.

  Musashi cracked his knuckles.

  “Maybe we are, but our efforts have protected people’s families, imagine the children and their parents living happily”.

  Nerissa kept walking behind Jaclyn.

  “I-I have nothing else to say”.

  Asami pulled out a piece of her own hair as the string of hair began to transform and gain sentience, turning into a brown hawk with large steel wings.

  “Go survey the surroundings”.

  The brown hawk jumped up as it launched into the sky at the speed of sound.

  “Let’s finish this quickly, I have a stream in a couple days”.

  Sayori came up from behind her.

  “Sis, we’re cleaning up leftover demons, this’ll take quite long, your stream can wait”.

  Asami pressed her fingers on her ear, it was a small device that was meant to communicate over long distances.

  “I don’t see anything, there’s nothing in a 5 mile radius”.

  Ying Xin looked around, her hands behind her head, her eyes wandering at the tall skyscrapers and a spear hanging behind her back.

  “This is my first time here, man I thought it’d be more like, it be more crowded, y’know what mean, Xing Xing”?

  A tan woman with emerald green eyes stared back at her, all she had was a tank top and jeans on her.

  “Ying, what would you expect? There are demons, they would’ve probably already evacuated”.

  Nerissa dropped to the floor, onto his knees as he stared straight at the wall, tears dripped down his face.

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  “Satoru”!

  His hands shook as he waddled towards the wall, reaching out towards the e reflective surface of the window.

  “How- how are you here”.

  Athena immediately went on guard, a long sword and shield manifesting within her hand with a golden glow.

  “Illusions? Or is it a panic attack”. Athena’s eyes darted around the city. “Everyone! Be on guard”!

  Yuki’s fists were incased in a steel gauntlet, with a red gem adorning the middle, the steel gauntlets were ability enhanced weapons that increased the power of her punches.

  Jaclyn had her hands in the pocket of her jeans.

  “Miss, Athena we were tasked with cleaning up demons yet where even are they”?

  Asami jumped backwards, she bit off her fingernail as a large tiger like monster spawned from her.

  She immediately unsheathed a small knife from her leather boot.

  “Athena! Beside you”!

  Asami dashed towards Jaclyn, slashing her knife towards her as the tiger bit Jaclyn’s arm.

  Athena’s eyes dilated.

  “Asami! What are you doing”?

  Jaclyn waved her hand, throwing the tiger straight into the wall, her arm was bleeding and the muscle in her arm was completely torn, she calmly stared at Asami as the muscles in her arms regenerated.

  Athena gripped on her shield and dashed into Asami, pushing her down onto the floor.

  “Asami’s brain must be being messed with, there must be conditions to getting brainwashed”.

  Asami started interlocking her fingers together, wooden puppets came up from the ground like moles digging up.

  The puppets crawled on all fours towards Athena grabbing her feet and planting her into the floor, as a brown hawk diving into Athena towards her shield at mach 50.

  Crack

  The glass shattered from the sonic boom, bursting Athena’s eardrums at point blank.

  Athena grit her teeth.

  “Stay still”.

  Athena let go of her sword as it dropped to the floor disappearing into a spark of light, she gripped her fist, slamming into Asami’s brown hawk bursting the bird like a balloon.

  “Keeper of Prosperity and Darkness, Winged Scion Of the Night~, you know what? Fuck it”!

  Asami snapped off her own fingers.

  “Shit”!!

  Asami pulled off her own fingers off her hand, blood rushing down like a waterfall.

  “Come out, Divine Angel”!

  Electricity crackled from her fingertips, from behind her back a large creature appeared from the light.

  A spherical creature with human like flesh, hundreds of eyes surrounding the creature with tens of wings on the creature’s back.

  Jaclyn dashed behind Asami’s and immediately knocked her out with a single punch.

  The spherical creature flew up into the sky, spreading out its wings, thunder came down from the sky, gray clouds muddled together as electricity crackled from the sky.

  Yuki raised her hand up at the spherical creature, psychic energy surrounded the creature, as she pulled it down onto the floor.

  Lightning came down onto Yuki, Athena reacted quickly, throwing her shield before the lightning landed onto Yuki.

  Jaclyn rushed forwards and slammed her broadsword into the creature.

  Sweat poured down her head as she calmly stared at the creature, stepping on the dead ball of flesh.

  “Why isn’t it disappearing”?

  Athena wiped away the blood from her lips.

  “I don’t know either”.

  Sayori gripped her own head as she wavered while she walked.

  “My head, it hurts so bad”!

  She grabbed a nearby tree as she slammed her own head into the wood, blood streamed down her own head.

  “I just want to stop the pain”!!

  Yuki slid behind her and pinned her to the ground.

  Sayori began to struggle, waving her head rapidly.

  “LET ME GO!! I just want to hit my head”!!

  Her eyes immediately rolled into the back of her head and dropped to the floor, as she started to snooze.

  Athena sat down onto the floor, staring at Sayori.

  “She fell asleep? Could this be Hypnos’s doing”? Athena held the back of her neck. “The only reason us three seeming aren’t affected is probably because of our energy output coating our body like a suit of armor”.

  Everyone else dropped to the ground, unconscious.

  Ying Xin stood there with a spear behind her back.

  “Hmm”? She looked at the three of them. “What happened to everyone else”?

  Yuki’s head nearly popped out of her head.

  “Huh? Mom, I thought you said our resistance had to do with our divineness~”. She pointed straight towards Ying Xin. “What’s wrong with her then”?

  Athena held her chin.

  “That spear, that’s Kronos’s weapon”. She sat down beside Asami and put her sword onto Asami’s chest. “Wake up”.

  Asami jolted awake and sat up, holding the heavy sword on her chest.

  “Athena, what even happened”?

  Her grip on the sword loosened as she stared up at Athena’s face.

  Athena sighed as she stared at the buildings around her as reality began to shift, hundreds of citizens began to rush towards them in a crowd.

  “We’re probably in a dream, our bodies are probably outside”.

  The sky began to slowly crack like a piece of glass, the buildings began to warp and get closer to the ground.

  Shards of the sky began to drop like meteors, flying down around Athena.

  Jaclyn immediately acted, she dashed around and caught the pieces of the sky before it hit the rest of the other adventurers.

  Ying Xin ran towards the crowd, spinning her spear around as she began to slash the citizens into bloody pulp.

  Blood splattered across her face as a smile spread across her face.

  The people in the crowds had no faces, completely empty like a blank canvas.

  “Get blinded”.

  Yuki’s eyes widened as she looked at the chaos in front of her.

  “She’s just like Neila, they’re insane, they don’t even feel anything for killing them”.

  Ying Xin’s spear began to rapidly glow as she left a trail of blood behind her, the golden spear began to shift into a darker shade of color, completely turning black, a golden energy growing at its tip.

  “Grow”.

  The black spear began to grow exponentially in size, growing as big as an entire building.

  Ying Xin smiled as she swung around the large spear, slicing the rest of the crowd in half.

  Crimson blood wasted on the mirror like walls of the buildings.

  “Well wasn’t that fun”?

  Ying Xin wiped the blood off her lips as her eyes changed to a tint of red, a grin spreading across her face.

  The cracked sky began to get wider, a window to an empty space filled with white lights, a large hand crawled through, a wooden hand with individual joints reached out towards the edge of the window.

  Violet electricity crackled as dark clouds began to fill the skies, purple electricity raining down in random directions.

  Jaclyn plugged her ears due to the loud thunder, she stared up at the large hand as extreme winds rushed through her hair.

  “Are you kidding me”?

  Jaclyn’s hands began to glow a heavenly glow as a bow made of light manifested in her hands, she pulled back an arrow of light as she immediately let go, a beam of light piercing through the wooden arm.

  Jaclyn’s eyes squinted as she focused on the distortion in space in front of her, a human like figure emerged, levitating with his hands behind his back, his blue eyes glowing in the dark and cloudy sky. His voice was deep and menacing like a beast, yet he wore a brown suit with a black tie, long black jeans and short violet hair.

  “Athena, I have come for you”.