❝how do you kill a monster without becoming one?❞
In the last city ruled by man, fish soar in the skies above and monsters lurk in the alleys below. Ten years ago, Jase lost both his legs and his mother to one such monster. However, tragedy couldn't...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Black hair curled around small shoulders as blood dripped from the throat of a young girl into a tin pail. Jase's stomach twisted violently as he looked at the corpse, realizing his paranoia had been right. This probably wasn't little Maggie but it was someone else's kid. Someone else's kid who had been murdered and their body shoved under the floorboards of an old apartment. So the hag turned out to be a Smile after all.
Removing his guns, Jase gritted his teeth and got out of his wheelchair. The time for that was over. He was an Agent of Stingray. And it was his sworn duty to protect the citizens of Last City from monsters.
Entering the living room, Jase pointed his guns at the Smile who was dangerously close to Kova. Both of them jumped away from the other in surprise, Kova's hand twitching towards his own gun, ready to fill the Smile with bullet holes. Of course, he didn't know that the hag was a Smile, but Kova wasn't exactly the type of person who needed a good reason to pick a fight.
"Hands up, lady," Jase growled.
Something dark and dangerous flashed beneath the hag's eyes before false surprise glossed over, a cheap trick to delay the inevitable. "I don't understand. What's going on?"
"How about you explain why there's a corpse under your floorboards," Jase said. The Smile's eyes flashed with surprise before they turned into something monstrous. If there ever was a human element in her dark eyes, it was gone now and Jase was staring into the black sclera eyes of a monster.
The morph made her taller. It returned to her the power of her youth. And she used that power to lunge without hesitation. Jase fired his gun with the same lack of mercy, his teeth ground together and eyes locked on his target. The Smile flinched when Jase's shot hit her square in the chest, sensitive eyes hurt by the bright flash of blue light that was emitted from his shot, but it barely slowed her down. She kept charging towards her demise.
Jase didn't feel fear. He wasn't a little kid anymore. There was just the steady beating of his heart as he fired shot after shot that looked random to the untrained eye. However, he was actually trying to get a clear shot of one of her weak points, but she was well versed in fighting against humans and kept her wrists tucked out of sight.
Then, almost as if he came out of nowhere, Kova fired at the Smile's neck, coming to life as he launched his own series of attacks against the Smile, drawing her attention. She spun on him, fangs bared as Jase aimed for her neck, but her hand flung up, blocking any shot Jase could make.
Things went to shit as the Smile ripped the gun straight out of Kova's hands, crushing it in an instant. Jase muttered a curse, trying to get a clear shot of her wrist. Anyone who said Smiles were mindless killers was gravely mistaken. They were smart and they knew that once a human lost their gun, they were as good as dead.
Thankfully, Kova was more demon than human to begin with and he just pulled out his knife, igniting the blade and kept swinging. His footwork was flawless, as though he'd been born with a knife in his hands, movements low to the ground but fluid as he jabbed and stabbed at the Smile, drawing her attention from Jase who could once again focus on finding her weak point.
