Atlas blew air out of his mouth with his hands hovering over
the various different sizes of wood on the ground.
He looked and a spark began to show as he continued to blow, he began to hear the familiar whispers. The whispers of the dead coming to confront him once again. This wasn't
anything new to him he was keen to the whispers he had been his whole life. The
whispers approached stepped by step but his body
didn't budge at all he continued to blow the fire getting hotter and hotter. As
time passed and the whispers got louder the fire got larger almost grazing his
hand he finally stood up and with one move he grabbed his sword up off the
ground and slashed the air beneath him, blood splattered on his face as the
demon gushed out all of it's various fluids, it fell to the ground and cried in
agony.
"Y-Your not the like the other foolish h-humans..." the
demon said, grimacing, A smirk began to sprout on Atlas's face as he put his
sword on the ground,
"Who the hell are you anyways..."
"The name's Atlas Valentino an up-and-coming bounty hunter."
He held his cowboy hat down as a sudden gust of wind enveloped the area around
them, "You probably think I'm gonna ask who you are but I don't really care.
You're going to die soon so yeah..." Atlas dragged the demon into the light and
sat down next to it, it was a long and lanky creature it's three fingers and
three toes from each leg were abnormally sharp, it's belly now sliced open
resembled a sort of beer bully humans have. He looked at Atlas with his one
yellow eye,
"I was just hungry... Mr. Valentino. My kids, my wife-"
"I'm not here to listen to your sob story," He put the sword
to his neck, "Tell me about your boss... what was his name..." Atlas set the
sword back on the ground and took a crumpled up piece of paper out of his
trench coat and unraveled it, "Lozambeeze. Tell me about him."
"You're really going after the boss. He's a scary demon
that's for sure; he subjects us to slavery at all the different m-mining camps
giving us a tiny bit of creds for our work. I'm
sure you passed some of them along the way... Don't tell me... you killed them
all didn't you Mr. Valentino."
Atlas grinned and looked up at the night sky, "What else
would I have done. You and I know demons and humans don't get along there will
always be conflict between us no matter what. The thing is that I don't know
which side is right or wrong. You're the first demon I've talked to like this
but of course it's only for business reasons."
Atlas heard a chuckle from the demon and looked down at him
the demon already had a grip on his sword and slowly began to stand up, his
stomach wound fully healed,
"Your right Mr. Valentino. Demons and humans will never get
along." The demon said while swinging the blade towards Atlas as his hands
touched the ground while doing a backflip, he thought he had dodged the strike
but he quickly felt a sharp pain in his right ankle that made him fall down on
right knee, he slowly looked down and saw blood trickling down onto his sock he
quickly looked back up at the demon which seemed to be patiently waiting for
Atlas to say something.
"Are you sure you want to do this. How would your wife feel?
Your kids?" the demons eyes looked left to right and he slowly began putting
the sword down,
"Your right I-" It was already too late, smoke emitted from
the handgun in Atlas's hand, the demon fell to it's knees and quickly to the
ground blood steadily flowing from it's head.
"N-no chances." Atlas said shaking he put his gun back in
his trench coat holster and after a few minutes of cleaning up his wound he
laid there looking up at the night sky, all the blood that he had shed today was
finally getting to him, to think that the demons really had lives of their own
just like humans. Was he the bad guy in this situation the thoughts continued
to flood his mind into he drifted off to sleep.
"It's time to wake up Atlas!" A familiar robotic feminine
voice yelled, she said it a couple of more times before Atlas finally got up,
"It looks like you killed a demon while I was asleep."
Atlas sighed with his palm engulfing his face he laid back
on the ground and winced in pain, "Your right. It looked just like the others
from yesterday." He tried to stand up while speaking and even though it was
painful he was finally upright and went over to his sword,
"You ready to go?" He asked shrugging off the pain,
"You know I'm always ready Atlas." The sword said,
"You know what to do A10."
The sword began transforming while saying, "Preparing
Motorcycle form." all while generating it's own wheels and becoming the
structure of a motorcycle that was white in color, the structure attached
itself to the wheels and A10 finally said, "Motorcycle form completed."
Atlas carefully sat down on the seat and grabbed the handles
as the motorcycle took off through the crimson forest. A few minutes of silence
passed, Atlas continued to think about his thoughts from last night he had
taken so many life's last night without a care in the world but that one
specific demon had completely shifted his thinking. Was his view in demons
flawed were the schools teaching him wrong, he thought back to when he was in
middle school in 'Real Life 101' which was really a class to talk about the
dangers of demons and why you should stay faraway from him.
He remembered his teacher the square-rimmed glasses, the
scraggy hair, and the heavy eye bags like he hadn't slept in years, "Demons are
of course monsters that we have to live with in this world as you all know." He
spoke in the same monotone voice he spoke in ever since the first day of
school, "But can you believe that there was a point in human life where no
demons existed, hell we didn't even know they were real it was a phenomenon,
something that was believed upon by groups of people, but it wasn't something
that humans had seen with their own two eyes." the teacher had seemed that he
was immersed in this idea he kept rambling on but there was one point that
caught Atlas's attention,
"Demons have no order they are not like us, they ravage our
towns, take our technology to use against us, I'm surprised they have masters
that they follow orders from, because everyone knows they have no discipline,
heck the don't even have families to rely on like we do."
He pointed his finger at them ecstatically, "That's what
makes us different from those demons! We have our family to rely on, people
that will keep us in check, we have rules!"
Then a girl raised her hand she had long blonde pigtails and
vibrant blue eyes, the teacher had finally calmed down, "Yes Elsie."
"Well have you ever seen a demon
or are you just following what everyone says?" her voice was calm a little bit
chilling,
The teacher sighed putting his hand over his forehead after
a brief pause, he finally said, "No Elsie, I haven't..."
A boy had butted into the conversation his name was Butch,
he was mostly known as the school bully by most people, "Well Elsie have you
seen what their kind has done to our towns or even all
of Calphurnia. You sure do ask dumb questions."
Another boy butted in one of Butch's followers, "Typical
Elsie always asking the stupid questions." The boy began to laugh while holding
his stomach,
Elsie looked down at her desk and said nothing else. It was
the last thing Atlas ever heard from her throughout the rest of middle school
and even high school.
"We're almost there Atlas." A10
said, "Is your ankle good enough to be fight on I could scan it for you to tell
you your chance of survival for the next fight."
"No I'm fine-"
"You have a 60 percent chance of survival please be careful
Atlas."
Atlas sighed, "Knew you were going to do that."
"One more question, are we taking them in Dead or Alive."
"Alive. I don't care what happens to me we're taking him
alive."
The rest of the ride was silent passing by the
crimson-colored trees while Atlas continued pondering with his thoughts, they
had finally began getting closer to the encampment but Atlas smelled something
off a familiar smell of something burning and it wasn't like it was food but
like a large amount of wood was being reduced to ash the trees covered his
sight he wish he was able to sense something was off. The wind had begun blowing
more fiercely almost knocking A10 off their course, this wasn't normal at all.
And then he heard it a large amount of noise coming from in front of him it
would stop and then start again randomly,
"Speed up a little bit A10 sometimes going on."
"As you wish." They responded as the motorcycle went faster
quite a bit, and then it came into sight the encampment getting burnt down in
front of his very eyes, before they even
got there no wonder Atlas smelled the burning but the wind and then in a split
second Atlas and A10 were lifted up into the air going higher and higher until
they quickly began tumbling towards the ground,
"Sword form now A10! NOW!" Atlas began to scream and got
louder and louder as the ground came closer to his face he began rolling on the
ground and finally stopped after passing out.
"Who the hell is that!" he heard a voice say,
"We should just go ahead and kill him." he heard another
voice say, he then finally came to his senses his hair being pulled and a knife
under his throat almost grazing it he felt blood trickling down his nose and
onto his mouth.