Slumrat Rising

Truth didn’t pride himself on being decisive in combat. He never hesitated in a fight, so quick decision-making didn’t seem impressive. The current situation was, therefore, new on several levels.

He propped his elbows up on the wall, looking down from the top of the garage. It was a pretty ordinary city street. The street next to a multi-story garage near the city sanitation headquarters will never be lively, but it wasn’t dead either. Gwaju was a dense little city, so the street was covered in small shops and kiosks. Pedestrians passed through the street as they walked the endless loop of their lives. Truth didn’t expect to achieve a surgical strike with a one-tonne truck, but he figured the hit would be pretty clean and reasonably spectacular.

The five-story tall pillar of fire was certainly spectacular. Truth could hardly take his eyes off it. It was coming up from where the definitely late and soon-to-be-unlamented Bosce Huelle died. Truth’s first thought was that the truck had been loaded with something, but he was pretty sure it hadn’t been. He certainly didn’t remember anything more dangerous than gravel in the bed of the truck and not much of that.

The next obvious thought was suicide summoning, but Bosce Huelle was a contract supervisor in one department in one small city. This giant pillar of fire was the single most impressive thing connected to his entire life. Even with determined, energetic graft, he couldn’t afford this kind of spellwork.

So where did it come from? And what was it for? People screamed and ran from the pillar, not waiting around to find out what was going to happen. Truth saw shopkeepers diving to pull down metal shutters. Maybe that would help.

School kids, eight or nine years old, ran together up the road. Must have been fifteen of them in identical plaid uniforms and identical red backpacks, and identical big yellow hats. The convoy system at work again.

Had they been stopping at the shop on the corner on the way home from school? It looked like it was aimed at kids, with candy, toys, masks, and even a puppet dressed like a clown waving at passers-by.

From the pillar came a long, fiery serpent. Tasting the air with a flaming tongue. Seeing all the scurrying humans trying to flee through their ever-so-flammable city. A casual flick of its tail smashed apart carriages and set fires. It was a Level Four demon in a city that probably had less than two hundred Level Fours. And of that number, how many knew how to fight? The snake struck with casual speed, eating someone. Their screams were mercifully brief.

Truth hadn’t the faintest idea about what to do.

On the one hand, he was here to cause mayhem and be as distracting a force as he possibly could be for Starbrite. On the other hand, there was a Level Four flame demon snaking its way through the city.

Now, this would be a huge distraction for Jeon, and certainly, some business units in Starbrite would be minorly inconvenienced, but he didn’t really see this as being any kind of real blow to the company. Not compared to planting the idea of a vast, unknown rebel force rising up against their corporate overlords.

This was just a lot of people dying for no good reason. Truth rubbed his chest absently. He didn’t like this. His eyes moved towards the school kids. They were running as fast as they could, but a bunch of Level Zero third graders against a Level Four fire demon? That wasn’t even a joke.

He could stop this. It wouldn’t be hard to kill that thing. Big demon, but that’s all it was- big. Child Eater was a bigger threat, and he slaughtered that wretch when he was just Level Three. He could stop this- but what was in it for him?

Did it advance any of his goals? Maybe. Plant the idea of rebel heroes or something. He wasn’t a propagandist, and he knew damn well trying to outplay Starbrite in the media wasn’t just a losing proposition- it was flatly impossible. Simply could not be done. Honestly, it would probably be a wash or something used by Starbrite to prop itself up in the public’s opinion.

Yeah, stopping the demon wasn’t going to help the big picture, and in the very, very unlikely event that someone connected the dots with his actions in Siphios, or even his identity as Truth Medici, it would be downright harmful. The smart thing to do would be to fade away from the scene and start investigating just why this was happening.

So why did he feel so bad? Why did he hate this? He hated this. This hurt him. It hurt him to watch this and do nothing, and he had a damn sword. He had a blade to cut away the things that hurt him.

Truth vaulted the side of the building. The damn thing was only about thirty meters tall. He’d be fine. He landed on his feet, rolled out the impact, and sprinted for the corner shop with the sweets. They had masks. Moving far faster than anyone, including the demon, could follow, he grabbed the first mask he saw that covered his whole face, then, for extra protection, added a hat. No fear of being mistaken for a Desrin this time- it was black, with a brim, and tied under the chin.

Mask on, hat on, sword out, total time from the roof, less than two seconds. The demon had killed… he didn’t know how many people in that time. It wasn’t pushing the pace, but it was still closing in on the kids. Who had clearly never stopped to think about turning on a side street.

The Tongue was ready to burst into holy liturgy. Truth firmly told it to chill, literally and metaphorically. The blade cooled and looked as much like an ordinary steel blade as it could. Truth dashed up to the snake. It was axiomatic in Jeon- the best place to strike a snake is three inches behind the head. Truth scaled up, eyeballed it, leaped into the air, and came down with a terrific CHOP!

The demon reared back, screaming, the sound shattering glass along the street. Thrashing in place, damaging even more buildings, killing even more people. Not good enough. Truth rushed in again, dodging the falling debris from the ruined shops and apartments. The demon saw him coming and spat thin beams of plasma, purple and sun-bright, at him. Incisive was running hard. Truth slipped past with the barest of margins, not losing half a step in his charge.

He tried to jump up for another cut, but the demon had anticipated him. It slammed its head down, hoping to crush Truth into the same paste he had made of dozens of others on this street. Truth dodged, then cut up from the side. His holy blade bit in under the serpent’s jaw, sawing in toward what should have been tendons. The demon shook its head and pulled back before instantly rushing forward, looking to escape or at least cause as much damage as it could before being sent back to hell.

Truth wasn’t having it. He jumped up onto the serpent’s back and ran up toward the head. Before the demon could react, Truth raised his leg and brought it down in an almighty stomp! The head plowed into the pavement, stunning it. Reversing his blade, Truth sank the Tongue into the brainpan of the hellish thing. Pushed it in right up to the hilt. And once it was safely hidden, he told it to run wild.

The Tongue burst into holy glory. The light of Heaven shone from it, purifying and expelling the demonic taint. Frost quelled the flames, the bane within the sword racing through the demon and inflicting the maximum possible harm upon it. The Blessing of the Sea of Brass practically unraveled the stolen matter of the demon’s body. From the outside, it looked like the demon’s head suddenly glowed white- then exploded. The ripple of destruction rolled down the length of the infernal snake, raining demon flesh across the street. It was done.

The portal winked out. The sudden absence of light made the street momentarily seem dim. Truth flicked off the gore from his blade. The kids were fine. One of the bolts of plasma came damn close, but they were fine. He rested the blade on his shoulder and took a last quick look around. Nothing left to kill. He sprinted for an alley and vanished from the scene.

____________________________________________

System, am I possessed? Or cursed or enchanted or something? Truth demanded.

>There was silence for a moment. Yeah, nothing that wasn’t here already when you left Siphios, at least as far as I can… oh for fucks sake. Oh, GOD DAMN IT! Truth, if brains were bombs, you couldn’t blow up a toadstool!>>

HEY! Knock off the negative self-talk shit! We have been through that way too goddamn much to start it up again.

>

Truth buried his face in his hands. “This guy,” he said, muffling the words in shame.

>

I am being mind controlled by my soul-guests?

>

Good. Still though.

>

What does that mean?

>

Why? There was literally nothing in it for me.

>

What?

>

And what does that mean?

>

Truth had no idea how to react to that. He just sat on the sidewalk, leaning up against the side of a building, hat tossed next to him. More than the sum of his pain? He had always been more than that, hadn’t he?

Hadn’t he?

____________________________________________

Truth was starving, and no matter how good the food in Siphios was, the street food of Jeon was justly legendary. He picked up a pile of wen DePonte had lying around and hit the streets. It was easy to fall back into the rhythm of Jeon. He didn’t know this city, but he knew how to find the shopping districts and, from there, the vendors. There were queues snaking all over the sidewalks.

You could get huge sandwiches with spicy cabbage salad, and meat, and three sauces, fried in butter, then wrapped in a thin layer of egg and fried again. You could get sausages on a stick, coated in layers of batter and studded with cubes of cheese, then deep-fried and coated with two sauces. Noodles in broth. Noodles in oil. Hot noodles. Cold noodles. Cold noodles that were spicy. Cold noodles that were mild. Fish. Just… fish beyond imagining. If you could turn something from the ocean into food, no matter how outlandish the methodology, someone in Jeon was doing it right this moment.

They might have been starving in the villages, but they were still eating fine in the city. Truth got a little closer and looked at the posted prices. Maybe not so fine. He had never seen an egg sandwich cost more than five wen. It was nine wen today with no meat, twenty with meat. And the meat was a thin slice of ham.

The stall selling deep-fried hard-boiled eggs was doing booming business. The fried chicken joints, which he remembered being absolute mob scenes, had short, orderly queues of very well-dressed people. He took a hard look at the boxes of chicken. As full as ever, but the boxes were smaller. Prices were way, way up too.

He looked over at the restaurants. At least on this street, in this little city, most of them were out of business or looking very empty. The bars were doing fine, though. Packed to bursting.

Truth sighed and queued up for fried chicken. He had the money. And there really was no chicken like Jeon fried chicken. He had missed it. It would be good to eat while he watched the news. Time to see how his big heroic moment played in Jeon.

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