Chapter Text
He was falling. Falling. Falling. Around him was nothing but a black void, devoid of sound or light. He might have expected as much; it was much the same when he passed from the Source to the First. That time, however, there had eventually formed images in the darkness – visions of the past and the future. This time, no such images seemed forthcoming.
Instead, after an eternity of falling through nothing, the world abruptly reformed, leaving him to hurriedly twist to land on his feet at the reappearance of solid ground on which to land. He braced himself, ready to absorb the shock of the landing with the skills learned over countless battles as a Dragoon, but unexpectedly, he landed lightly, with only a soft thud, as though he'd fallen perhaps ten fulms rather than the thousands it had felt like.
Straightening from his slight crouch, he looked around. Unlike in the First, where he'd been dropped into the wilderness outside of the Crystarium, this time it appeared that he was in a city, or at least a residential district. One with large plots of land, that was. He appeared to have landed on somebody's lawn; the next nearest house was well in the distance.
Overall, he had no idea where he was or what to do now. This world was not on the brink of destruction like the First had been, but surely there were still people who needed help.
He began making his way across the lawn towards the nearby house. Perhaps they would be willing and able to help him find people who needed his help. …Or, at least, be able to give him some idea where he was and what the world was like.
He stepped up a few short stairs to the front door and went to knock – in most places that had doors, knocking was an acceptable method of getting the inhabitants' attention. Before he could, however, there was a sound from inside: a muffled scream. Muffled or not, it was undeniable; the sound of screaming was, unfortunately, something he was relatively well acquainted with.
Pausing for a moment, he leaned in to listen closer.
Sure enough, he heard a quiet, pained groaning noise, followed by a high pitched giggle.
Ah. So it was like that. He was almost tempted to sigh, but that would be a needless delay.
He wasted no time. Without hesitation, he stepped back and drew his leg back for a good, strong kick.
There was a magnificent crash from elsewhere in the house. This was not something Jack Slash found particularly concerning; Crawler often caused chaos just trying to navigate buildings meant for regular-sized people. Any number of Jack's companions could, indeed, be breaking things simply for the fun of it.
He had managed to convince them of the merits of laying low, especially with the added bonus of their current game, but he wouldn't be surprised if they were getting bored. Slow torture, careful not to simply kill one's victim, was not Crawler's style in particular.
Jack sat back on his heels, spinning his knife idly in one hand, and listened, while poor, sweet Riley sobbed over her mother, frantically trying to tend her wounds. They weren't in much danger of being overheard, but if the sounds continued, Jack could assume Crawler was getting restless, in which case he would need to be handled before he started causing real trouble.
Then Shatterbird began to sing. Her song filled the house – and was shortly followed by the cacophony of every window in the house shattering at once.
Shit, thought Jack, straightening out of his crouch. The Siberian, lurking at the edge of his vision, went alert. Shatterbird also had a tendency to get restless, but she wasn’t normally a troublemaker. She knew better than to start something now for no reason... which meant there was a good chance they’d already been found.
Jack turned towards the door to make his way to the living room, where Shatterbird was supposed to be keeping the father of this charming family company. Before he even made it out the door, however, Shatterbird’s song went silent. Jack slowed, moving more cautiously than before. The most likely option, if indeed they’d had an intruder, was that Shatterbird had easily defeated them. Less likely, but still possible, was that their intruder was powerful, skilled, or underhanded enough to kill Shatterbird, somebody who was both powerful and cautious herself, in under a minute.
That certainly made for a dangerous foe, if so.
The Siberian followed him out of the master bedroom, then stuck herself at his side, keeping pace with him as he crossed the kitchen to the wide arched doorway leading to the living room. They weren’t the only ones who had been drawn by the signs of combat; Crawler thumped and crashed his way out of the pantry, moving towards the living room, and the distant sound of Chuckles’ demented, too-fast mockery of a laugh grew louder as he, presumably, made his way down the stairs.
Before Jack even made it to the doorway leading into the living room, he caught sight of Shatterbird, lying prone on the floor in a puddle of her own blood, a number of deep cuts criss-crossing her chest. His lips thinned. Then, as soon as he entered the doorway proper, he saw her killer: a black-haired man dressed in shining silver armor and a blue-and-white cape.
It was no cape outfit that Jack recognized. A newcomer? Bold, to think he could stand up to the Slaughterhouse Nine. Or perhaps he didn’t know who he was dealing with.
The unknown cape was standing next to the stairs, concealed in its shadow from Chuckles, who was just landing on the ground floor. Swiftly, the unknown cape stepped up behind Chuckles and brought a sword up in one smooth movement that passed neatly through Chuckles’ neck, severing it and silencing Chuckles’ horrible hyena laugh. Chuckles never saw it coming.
Jack narrowed his eyes, becoming annoyed now by the audacity of this hero. Chuckles’ death was no great tragedy, but the loss of Shatterbird – beautiful, deadly Shatterbird – was one Jack felt more keenly. And to think this hero had the nerve to come into Jack’s house and start picking off members of his Slaughterhouse. Between that and the fact that, frankly, the armor-clad cape was simply too dangerous to be allowed to live, there was only one recourse.
While the enemy’s back was still turned and he was yet ignorant of Jack’s presence, Jack brought up his own blade... and slashed.
In the same moment, the armored cape turned to the side and dive-rolled out of the path of Jack’s attack, leaving it to score a neat line across the wall instead, just where the armored cape’s neck had been a moment ago.
Jack frowned, disconcerted by the impossible dodge. Was it pure luck? There was no way a parahuman walking around in full plate mail with a sword – and, Jack saw now, a shield on the other arm – was a Thinker. Especially not one who’d managed to overpower Shatterbird and behead Chuckles in a single swing.
The armored cape rolled gracefully back to his feet, losing hardly any time in the motion, before turning unerringly towards Jack. He either had a power augmenting his physical attributes, or was an incredibly experienced fighter. His movements were too smooth for anything else. The Siberian stepped in front of Jack and started moving towards the armored cape, flexing her fingers like she could already feel his entrails in her hands.
“What the hell is going on!?” Winter shouted from the top of the stairs.
"A fight!?" Crawler came barreling out of the dining room through a doorway right next to the stairs, tearing chunks out of the edges of the double-wide opening in his haste.
The armored cape threw himself out of Crawler's path, avoiding the swiping scythe end of Crawler's foremost arm, the acid Crawler was splattering around, and the full bulk of Crawler's massive, monstrous body all at once.
Crawler had to contort to turn around, and Winter, on her way down the stairs, narrowly avoided being clipped in the process. Inside a single-family home was hardly the most ideal location for Crawler to fight, especially if they wanted to avoid him knocking the house down on them all. Well, it couldn’t be helped, Jack supposed.
“It appears we have a visitor,” he said with a grin, gesturing broadly. “Let’s make him feel welcome, shall we?”
This was more for the stranger’s benefit than Jack’s fellow Slaughterhouse members. Quite simply, it was an intimidation tactic.
The armored cape, however, did not deign to be intimidated. He looked over at Jack, blank-faced and unimpressed. Even so, at least, he was distracted long enough for Winter to throw out one of her fields on top of him. The quicker they could end this fight, the better. It had gotten too messy already.
Yet again, the armored cape threw himself into a dodge-roll, just clearing the edge of Winter’s foggy field in the same instant it formed.
He should have been distracted long enough, Jack amended, slightly annoyed. So was Winter, judging by the string of invectives she let out. She began expanding her field, weakening it in exchange for greater coverage – even catching the armored cape in it at all would be better than nothing.
The armored cape, however, noticed immediately what was happening, and backed away. Jack observed this thoughtfully. The stranger was too quick and strong to be a Thinker, but his reaction speeds were too quick to be anything but. A grab-bag, perhaps? A danger sense style Thinker power and some minor enhancement to his physical capabilities would fit, and those were quite in line with the powers a grab-bag typically exhibited.
Jack aimed another slash the way of the armored cape, and yet again, he dodged without even looking, this time with a smooth side step. He didn't even falter when the Siberian launched herself at him.
A surprisingly annoying grab-bag, Jack noted.
This iteration of his Slaughterhouse didn’t work well together, and with Crawler a relatively recent addition, they weren’t well-versed in doing so. With Winter’s field blocking her and Crawler from the armored cape, neither of them could do much. Crawler knew it, too, and growled and gnashed his many large teeth irritably, though he made no move to attack Winter and forcibly bring down her field... yet.
Winter’s expanding field forced the armored cape to move steadily to the side of the room, away from the stairs where Winter and Crawler were, to avoid it, all the while trading blows with the Siberian and dodging Jack’s own attacks. Irritatingly, he did all of this without any great show of effort, his slow move away from Winter’s field almost appearing incidental in the course of his fight with the Siberian. Not a single attack landed on him, the Siberian’s or Jack’s. At the same time, of course, none of his sword strikes did anything to the Siberian, whether they hit or not.
Ultimately, Jack thought, they had the upper hand. The Siberian was an unstoppable force, and Winter’s inexorably expanding field meant that it wouldn’t be long before their enemy ran out of room to maneuver.
Then the armored cape made a mistake. He let Winter’s field get too close and had to jump away to avoid being caught in it. After that, he was wrong-footed; he had to hurry to dodge Jack’s next attack, and thus he let the Siberian get too close. Her clawed hand shot towards the armored cape’s unguarded throat, and he leaned back, then suddenly kicked upwards with one leg, slamming his armored foot into the Siberian’s chest.
It was enough to stagger her, and she stumbled back a step before catching herself, which allowed the enemy time to regroup. Jack threw another slash his way to interfere with that, musing on the situation. The Siberian never spoke and hardly emoted, leaving her difficult to read, but Jack got the feeling she was startled and offended by the sudden kick.
Jack himself was forced to revise his estimate of their enemy’s physical strength; to knock the Siberian back, even when she wasn’t expecting it, was no easy task.
Before the Siberian could even close the distance between them again, the armored cape changed up his strategy: he lifted his sword... straight up, point facing the ceiling, and struck the Siberian with a bolt of lightning.
...What?
It didn’t do anything but leave a scorch mark on the floor, of course, the Siberian being who she was, but Jack revised his estimate of the armored cape’s capabilities yet again all the same. It wasn’t so strange for a grab-bag to have up to three or four different – weak – powers, but it was a bit surprising.
Pure surprise made both Jack and the Siberian pause – only for a matter of seconds, but the armored cape seized the opportunity. He turned towards Winter, peering through the hazy fog of her field, apparently heedless to how close it was getting. Once more, he lifted his sword, pointed towards the ceiling, this time held in a two-handed grip, and a blue-white flower of glowing light exploded out of Winter with no further warning than that. She gaped silently, red beginning to bleed through her jacket as she fell to her knees, and then onto her face. Her field snapped out of existence.
Jack pursed his lips. That made half of his Slaughterhouse dead at this man’s hands. This was growing deeply irritating. Not to mention, if that was the same power the armored cape had demonstrated with the lightning, it was a very different usage of it. Jack did not like to fight enemies he didn’t know the capabilities of, and this was why.
Granted, strange powers or not, it was very unlikely either the Siberian or Crawler would fall to this random, unknown cape. It would take far greater forces than a grab-bag with a few interesting powers for that.
Crawler leapt for the new chance to fight the armored cape now that Winter’s field was gone, and charged across the now-safe space between them. That suited Jack just fine. Their foe could contend with the Siberian and Jack, perhaps, but with the addition of Crawler, he’d almost certainly be overwhelmed. Few were the people who stood a chance against both of the Slaughterhouse’s unstoppable monsters.
Crawler opened with a glob of acid spit that the armored cape rolled away from, then turned to his usual strategy of utilizing pure bulk. The Siberian rejoined the fight, and then the armored cape was left dodging around attacks from all three of them – hardly an easy task, particularly in such a contained space.
Unlike before, the armored cape no longer had any time for attacking. He was kept entirely on the defensive, which meant that as soon as he made a mistake, the battle was theirs.
The armored cape ducked away from the Siberian, then dodged around Crawler, trying to put Crawler’s bulk between himself and the Siberian. Unfortunately for him, this attempt brought him within reach of Crawler’s back legs, and the scythes that tipped them. The armored cape brought his shield up and blocked the two scythe-legs with a plaintive screech of metal, but it knocked him back. The Siberian came up behind him, fully prepared to take advantage of his weakness, and forced him to do an awkward dodge roll.
This left him open to Crawler, who seized the opportunity and threw his whole bulk into his next attack, flattening their foe to the floor. For a second, Jack dared to think that was the end of it. Few and far between were those who could survive being crushed by Crawler, not to mention the acid he spewed.
But, of course... Not only armored, their foe was also some level of Brute. He rolled out from under Crawler and back to his feet, though the motion was nowhere near as smooth as his previous movements. He stumbled back a step further, clearly injured, and didn't recover in time to dodge the Siberian as she came dashing around Crawler and slashed at him. He blocked, instead, throwing his shield in front of him.
The Siberian's deadly nails impacted the shield instead of the armored cape's chest plate – and tore straight through it to the arm it was strapped to. And, with a wrench and a splatter of blood, she tore his arm off, tossing it and the shield away.
Their enemy, outnumbered and grievously injured, looked mildly put out about the loss of his arm. He backed away from the Siberian – who, like a cat who enjoyed playing with her food, let him. Idly, Jack slashed at him another time, though honestly, he was all but done for at this point, between the Siberian and Crawler, even if he didn’t bleed out.
Ducking under Jack’s attack yet again, the armored cape lifted the sword in his remaining hand, tapped the flat of the blade against his forehead and bowed over it like he was praying to it, and was enveloped briefly in white light. The whole thing lasted barely a breath, and then the armored cape was rolling his shoulders and standing straight like nothing had happened.
His entire arm had regrown. A moment later, with the kind of mind-aching effect common to teleportation powers, his armor and shield had returned to his arm as well. A quick glance revealed that, in fact, the entire arm the Siberian had tossed away was now gone.
...A regenerative aspect to his Brute power would have been easy enough to explain. Yet the transference of his armor to his new arm, and the disappearance of the old one... Something like Gray Boy’s power? Highly localized time control?
That was dangerous.
Especially if there were more aspects to it than simply the regenerative one – somebody like Gray Boy might not be able to kill Crawler or the Siberian, but he could probably stop at least Crawler for good.
The armored cape ducked away from the Siberian, circling the room to keep a safe distance from her without running into Crawler – as much as such a thing was possible in a contained space with a monster as big as Crawler – whilst still avoiding attacks from Jack, turned towards Crawler, and threw his arms wide. It seemed foolish, as though he was saying, “Come, attack me,” but the next instant, a golden glow lit the room as some form of shining glyph materialized on the floor under Crawler.
The glyph exploded up from the ground in a searing golden beam, taking a considerable chunk of Crawler and three of his legs with it.
Crawler let out a shout of pain, which quickly dissolved into mad, uproarious laughter. “Yes! Yess, good! More! Hurt me more!”
The armored cape paused. For the first time, he looked faintly perturbed, his brow furrowing. Crawler’s masochistic reactions could put anyone off a battle, Jack agreed, but the fact that this bothered their foe more than losing his arm had? That was annoying. What the hell kind of hero was this? And why had Jack never heard of him before?
Crawler’s midsection and legs regenerated, and he launched himself at the armored cape for a renewed assault. Their enemy dodged away, returning to dodging and weaving through their attacks with nary a chance to attempt to attack. By all appearances, they had the upper hand, Jack thought, and yet... There was a thoughtful expression on their foe’s face that he didn’t like the look of.
Sure enough, after a few moments of this, partway through a dodge roll, the armored cape acted. With a flash of light bright enough that Jack flinched and closed his eyes on reflex, the armored cape... changed his clothing, switching out the silver armor and blue-and-white cape for a black and white jacket over black and orange pants and boots. The whole outfit was accentuated with gold edging and accessories.
Jack stared. The Siberian stared. Even Crawler stopped and stared.
“What?” said Jack, gesturing with his knife at the entire outfit.
Genuinely, from the bottom of Jack’s black, shriveled little heart, what the fuck. He’d seen – and done – a lot of horrifying and baffling things in his time as a villain and mass murderer. Everything else the no-longer-armored cape had done was, if annoying and startling, at least within expectations. This, however, was nothing Jack had ever experienced before.
The no-longer-armored cape followed Jack’s gaze to his own clothing, then looked back up to meet Jack’s eyes. That blank stare seemed to indicate that he had no idea what the problem was – or else that he was deliberately messing with them.
This definitely seemed like the more reasonable option, especially considering that the next moment, he plucked a book from its place at his belt, opened it to a seemingly random page, and scribbled briefly inside it, causing another flash of light, this one directly in front of him. Out of the light formed a creature: a squat, blue, glowing, quadrupedal squirrel-thing about the size of a small dog with a bushy tail and long ears.
For a moment, nobody moved. The small creature was cute, Jack supposed. Judging by his experience and the current situation, that almost certainly meant it was unbelievably deadly.
What even was this guy’s power, though? This level of variety was stretching it for a grab-bag. A Trump? Jack hated to even think it. Ugh. Trumps.
It was the now-robed cape that acted first. He lifted his... book up straight in the air, and the squirrel thing dissolved into light, surging upwards and outwards until it took the shape of an ethereal dragon, twice the height of its creator. Before anyone could react to this new development, both the book-wielding cape and the newly-formed dragon spat orbs of light at Crawler.
As soon as the orbs of light impacted, they both exploded into brilliant pillars of light that completely engulfed Crawler and reached to the ceiling – possibly higher, if the ceiling hadn’t been in the way.
At this point, after everything, Jack was annoyed but unsurprised to find Crawler reduced to so much ash. There wasn’t even a gory mess; he’d been all but disintegrated in the blast. A laser of some sort, Jack assumed. Was this guy a Blaster too, of all things?
Maybe it was like Eidolon’s power, Jack considered. Except in the form of full power sets, one at a time, and now the enemy cape had switched out his previous powers for entirely new ones, including this Blaster-style one.
The Siberian acted fast against this increased threat, lunging for the robed cape. Jack resumed his own attacks as well – if the enemy had indeed switched out his increased physical capability power and hopefully his Thinker power as well, then he’d made a grave mistake. The cape dodged away again, however, ducking and weaving around both the Siberian’s attacks and Jack’s as smoothly as he had before, all the while firing yet more blasts at her, though these ones were considerably smaller than whatever he’d hit Crawler with. The dragon kept attacking too, some form of wind manipulation that fluttered the Siberian’s hair with every beat of its massive wings.
The enemy cape was irritatingly swift even with this inexplicable outfit change. What was the point, if not because he'd switched powers? The overall effect on the battle was minor. Their enemy had evidently gained enough firepower to kill Crawler, but was still doing nothing to the Siberian. Even so, he hadn't given up his ability to avoid their attacks, either.
And thus they were all at something of a stalemate.
Before long, the dragon disappeared, shrinking back down to the squirrel thing. It only stayed in that form briefly before its creator lifted his book again and changed its form yet again – this time to a huge flaming bird.
A phoenix.
A phoenix?
Of course that was something this Trump could do. Trumps.
Now the book-wielding cape began firing fiery blasts at the Siberian. These blasts didn't do anything more than the previous ones, but Jack didn't like the introduction of yet more powers in their enemy's arsenal.
It was beginning to look like the Siberian and the book-wielding cape could keep this up indefinitely – or at least until the stranger began to tire. Before that, however, was one other problem for Jack: their enemy had demonstrated his willingness and ability to take out every other enemy bothering him before the Siberian. And Jack was next up on the list. There wasn't much Jack could do against the instant, ranged attacks the armored cape had previously demonstrated.
However... Their foe was a hero. The civilians in the house may not be his main priority, but he was practically obligated to show concern for their well-being. Jack certainly had no such inclinations.
While the Siberian, obviously getting frustrated, grabbed a big plush chair and threw it at their enemy and said enemy, rolling out of the way, turned his glowy creature into a massive, flaming, clawed and fanged beast, Jack made his way cautiously into the corner of the room, where the father of the delightful family who inhabited this house was cowering.
Or perhaps unconscious, without the constant encouragement to stay awake that Shatterbird had been providing.
The dead weight was a pain, but Jack hauled the man up anyway, positioning him so that he could press his knife to the unconscious man's throat.
Jack turned back just in time to witness an inexplicable sight: the Siberian, collapsing to the floor, with no clear reason. The enemy cape lowered his book. The Siberian didn't move. She wasn't breathing, either, but that wasn't out of the norm for her, so it was difficult to tell what was wrong with her.
Jack gritted his teeth, truly angry now. Fucking Trumps. What was this nonsense? Jack couldn't even count how many famous and experienced capes the Siberian had defeated and come out unscathed. Who did this nobody think he was?
After a moment, the book-wielding cape turned and caught sight of Jack and his ill-fated hostage. His reaction, far from the wide-eyed horror Jack hoped for, was rather lackluster. There was no surprise. No horror. He took in the scene before him, and his eyes narrowed. That was all.
Jack sneered. “Well now, hero. If you want this poor, innocent father of two to keep his life, you’ll put your weapon down and surrender.”
The other cape met his eyes evenly. Slowly, he lifted his book and let it fall from his hand. Before it even hit the ground, however, with a blinding flash of light, the armored cape had, indeed, returned to the armor he’d been wearing before, sword and shield in hand.
“Don’t make any sudden moves!” Jack ordered, displeased by the disobedience. He pressed the blade of his knife to his hostage’s throat. Even if the armored cape used one of his tricks from before, Jack was taking this man with him. “Or this guy gets it.”
The armored cape stared at him inscrutably. Always with that blank look on his face, impossible to read. It pissed Jack off.
“We can just go our separate ways,” Jack said coaxingly. “I get to leave peacefully, you get the bounties on all the rest of these guys, and those kids get to keep their father. A good deal, isn’t it?”
No response – and then the armored cape gestured sharply with his sword in Jack’s direction. Fully prepared to be struck by lightning or disintegrated with a laser, Jack slashed across his hostage’s throat, expecting to feel the warm splatter of life blood spurting out from his carotid. It was not forthcoming. Instead, a thin red line opened across the armored cape’s previously un-marred neck, blood slowly trickling down.
The hair on the back of Jack’s neck stood up. What the hell was this?
The armored cape began walking in Jack’s direction, his armored greaves clanking on the floor with every step. Jack had a very bad feeling about this. He drew his knife back and stabbed it into his hostage, where the shoulder met the neck. Another red spot of blood appeared on the armored cape.
Jack hadn’t seen anything like that since the day he killed King. What the hell. Maybe he’d been wrong about the armored cape’s power all along! Maybe it was some kind of nightmare manifestation. This was practically right out of one of Jack’s worst nightmares.
Shit. Shit. He had no options left.
Hefting his hostage with both hands, he slung him at the armored cape, then turned and ran. There was a back door just off the kitchen – he only had to make it fifteen feet – that wasn’t that bad.
Clank.
Clank.
Clank clank clank
There was a sharp pain in Jack’s back, all the way through to his chest, along with another mocking flash of light. He looked down, and saw the sword protruding out of his chest.
Well. What a boring way to die, he thought distantly.
And that was the last that Jack Slash knew.