A woman emerged from the dense dust cloud behind Anthony. She was small, dirty, her gothic gown and corset streaked with grime and dried blood.
Her gray, bulging eyes were terrifyingly empty. She tightly clutched a heavy, tarnished silver locket at her breast.
"They only care for their own survival, Sept. All hosts are scum," She spat, her voice mournful but laced with an incredible, barely-contained rage.
Anthony turned, his gaze flickering between the two figures.
"What do you think Sierra, is he a lead, perhaps, or a tin?" Sept mused, stepping closer.
Sierra laughed, a harsh, loud sound. "He might be an Iron, but he's far too stupid to be a Copper. Coppers are demigods, remember? They wouldn't be so careless as this one. "
"Why are you doing this?" Anthony rasped, tasting dust and blood in his mouth.
Sept's soft demeanor vanished, replaced by a cold, sharp edge that seemed to lower the temperature in the air.
Sept did not walk; they launched, leaping off the remaining wall structures with impossible, shattering speed, muttering, "All those who host gods deserve nothing but death."
The gold spear whistled, a sound that blasted the air itself and sent fresh cracks running through the surviving buildings.
Anthony barely dodged, the sheer force of the near-miss whipping his coat around him. He grunted, trying to assess the damage caused by the swing.
Once he blinked, Sierra was there, impossibly close, a wide, terrifying smile splitting across her face.
She was small, but her silver hair seemed to crackle with insanity.
She brought a stiff-legged axe kick down onto his left shoulder.
The impact wasn't just physical; it felt like a hammer striking an anvil.
Anthony's already-injured leg buckled, his body weight shifted down, and the ground beneath his boots shattered, creating a crater.
He coughed, fighting the pressure, and snarled, "How? Hosts are this strong, and you…you're not a host. I don't sense anything as such on you."
"Even humans have ways of rivaling you gods, Anthony," Sept said, stopping just behind Sierra, their spear held ready.
Anthony's eyes flitted rapidly. Sept's spear. Sierra's locket.
He looked from one to the other. He chuckled lightly. Sept and Sierra looked confused.
He then threw his head back and laughed…a long, wheezing, breathless sound of sudden, manic amusement.
Sierra dashed forward in a blur of black cloth, aiming for his head.
Anthony's smile, however, was sharper, colder.
His green eyes glinted, not with reflected light, but with raw power.
Electric currents, faint at first, danced across his brown hair.
Sierra's eyes widened instantly; she tried to recoil, sensing a sudden, profound shift in the very atmosphere.
It was too late. Anthony's hand shot out, impossibly fast, and grabbed her by the throat.
"You lot," Anthony spat, his voice now a booming crackle of static, "might have overpowered weakling Tins with your little artifacts, but I will show you the true power of those who host gods."
He slammed her into the fractured ground.
The sound of her bones creaking and the earth shattering beneath her were simultaneous.
Suddenly, with a surge of strength equal to his own, Sierra's hand grabbed his head, using the downward momentum to smash his skull against a protruding chunk of broken stone.
Anthony staggered backward, dazed.
He touched his nose. His fingers came away wet.
He stared in genuine surprise, then yelled in fury. "What did you do?"
The blood that dripped from his nostrils was not the dark, mundane crimson of a human.
It glittered like gold as soon as it touched the dust.
Furious, Anthony straightened, his body now humming with energy.
Bigger electric currents generated from his core, lashing out and beginning to gather in his right hand like a solid, captive thunderbolt of lightning.
The air became instantly, unnaturally dry.
Above the alley, the sky turned an angry, impossible dark, as if a storm had been summoned.
"RAIJIN VERDICT!"
He jumped impossibly high, a human lightning rod, and hurled the bolt at Sierra.
The air screamed as the thunderbolt whistled towards her with a deafening, crackling speed.
The bolt hit Sierra in full force.
The resulting blast was exponentially greater than the first, a wave of pure kinetic energy that wiped clean everything within a half-mile radius.
The men, dressed in the dark uniform Smear Lisle police, who had just rounded the corner disintegrated instantly.
Sept, however, was already airborne, propelled by the same furious vertical leap, their gold spear lifted high to deflect the extreme edges of the shockwave.
The dust cloud that followed was massive, choking out the weak sunlight entirely.
Anthony landed heavily back into the deeper, wider crater.
He could feel himself getting exhausted. He had to end this quickly.
The dust began to settle.
Through the swirling grit, he saw her.
Sierra was standing where the bolt had hit, crackling, but not dead.
Lightning danced across her skin, which was already healing the minor wounds.
She drew a long, slow breath, opening her bulging, manic eyes to glare at him.
She blitzed. She was a silver-haired blur, her hand lunging for his throat.
Anthony was already moving, his depleted reserves forcing him to move at pure speed.
He blitzed sideways, his own foot shooting out, catching her precisely in the knee.
Sierra stumbled, momentarily losing her impossibly fast momentum.
He was about to grab her when his instincts shrieked danger again.
He glanced back, seeing Sept, high above the dust cloud, aiming the golden spear for a perfect, final throw.
Anthony sneered, despite the exhaustion. "I'll just simply dodge it like before, you pathetic…"
He never finished the thought. Sierra's free hand had darted out and seized him in a rear body lock, squeezing with impossible, desperate strength.
Anthony jerked in anger, uselessly blasting residual electric currents outward in huge, pulsing arcs.
"Why the hell won't you die, you stupid bitch!" he screamed, the static in his voice peaking one last time.
Then he heard it…..the faint, high-pitched whistle of the spear, and the thunk as it landed.
It had gone clean through his heart, the bright golden blade pinning him firmly to the earth, his body lifted slightly off the ground, a gruesome, crucified sight.
Anthony Laroque coughed.
Glittering blood, fading rapidly into a mundane dark red, poured from his lips.
Sept approached. Sierra released her death grip, staring at the diminishing light in his eyes with cold satisfaction.
Sept bent low, their masked face inches from his.
They reached out and, with an unsettling tenderness, hugged his pierced body tight, caressing his blood-soaked hair.
"You won't find it," Anthony croaked, the last strength leaving him. "You can't win this war. There are far more powerful hosts than me."
Sept released the hug.
"We're working on it."
There was a wet snap, and the Lieutenant Laroque's head lolled to the side, his monocle-less green eyes fixed forever on the smoky sky.
************
Somewhere in another universe, a man named Aquila Totti awoke with a jolt.