Phantom 2

Phantom 2

…

Commissioned by Blfqy

Word Count: 2572

…

The song is a lullaby. A charming parable from your childhood. One that you’d never thought you’d hear again, but you’d hoped that you’d pass it on to your children. For the briefest of moments, an infinite amount of time during a battle, you are swayed by the sound of the music. However, you swiftly recover. That hundredth of a heartbeat when you’d stopped plagues you for a moment.

But, it plagues you less when you see what the lullaby does to Lucifer.

“D-damn you! Damn you! What are you doing, you fool!? You are reneging upon our deal! Upon your word!” Lucifer’s face contorts between pain and wroth. Struggle and spite strive to overcome one another upon one face. What you look upon, even with the most clinical gaze, makes your stomach turn over. It is both extraordinary and disgusting thing you’ve ever witnessed. Two souls war over the same body, turning it into no more than a toy to be fought over. “Do you believe you can escape this place!? With these two against you!? Do you think they’ll let you live, after everything you’ve given me!?”

For a moment, you consider striking against Lucifer, but you decide against it. You nothing that can decisively kill your current opponent. Joyeuse, perhaps, can suffice. However, if you use Allsbane’s pre-ascension form, you’ll be granting a copy of one of the strongest blades to exist to Lucifer. No. All you can do now is retreat, and hope that the psychological attack will debilitate Lucifer enough for you to ally properly with the source of the lullaby. 

You have a feeling that you’ll get along with this other version of yourself better than the one subsumed Lucifer. 

However, that is not to say, you’re going to retreat without a measure of covering fire.

…

“Was it necessary to throw a truck full of explosives at him? It was possible that you would’ve decided the struggle in Lucifer’s favor.” The second “you” is… the very picture of a Tuzi chief. His garments are laden with various implements that declare his rank. And, there are several rings on his fingers that denote his bonds to several wives. He even lacks Occisor as you do. Still, what little jealousy you feel for him his quashed. Whatever the difference between yourself and this “you” is, you are allies with one another, and come from different times altogether. Perhaps, he is simply more fortunate than you, or has traversed a different path altogether. “It is unlikely that we can defeat him together.”

Shaking your head, you agree that defeating Lucifer is impossible. However, you’re sure that you can weaken your opponent enough to allow your ally’s song to take a deeper hold upon your lost self. As you speak with your newer counterpart, you gaze upon him more deeply. Your suspicions are confirmed within a moment. In terms of power, he is your lesser. You cannot sense Destruction Arcana off of him, and he lacks the burgeoning power of Nemesis that both you and Lucifer have at your disposal. 

He is a Chieftain, while you are a Warrior.

Again, some portion of you is enticed, angered, and jealous of your counterpart’s status. But, once more, you quash it with ease. If he is not as strong as you, and does not have the same power as you, then that means he has not endured the same hardships and terrors that you have. There is nothing to fret about both your circumstances. You are you. He is who he is. His path is as divergent as your own from Lucifer’s. It is an interesting mental challenge to consider, but you do not have the current time to ponder it. For now, overcoming your opponents is necessary, above all else.

“Well, then, I leave myself in your care. As a fighter, I’m lacking in regards to the two of you. I can only hope that I tip the scales as much as you wish.” You’re glad to know that your “self” who is a chieftain does not try to do everything himself. Relying on others, even in your current state, is integral to being effective against all the threats that come. You cannot be everywhere at once, even with Miyakuro’s Bifrost. The Preservers would not be effective, if you were the only member… though you doubt that you’d be a Chieftain if you were with the Preservers. “But, would you care to share what you’d want me to do?”

Still, something needs to be done in regards to your counterparts attitude.

Simply, you tell him that you are a Warrior of the Tuzi, but he is not your Chieftain. Those words alone make the pleasant smile upon his face fade in an instant. He seems incensed for a moment, but your glare silences him before he can speak. He has, himself, admitted that he is lacking in combat ability. Therefore, you will not be sharing your thoughts with him. You will be giving him orders, and you expect those orders to be followed, as you are a Warrior, and he is not. 

During battles, the Tuzi do not expect the impossible of the elderly and incapable. Warriors protect, fight, and eliminate threats. Should the rest of the tribe be in danger, a Chieftain may only command Warriors, if they are a Warrior themselves. To lead during battle, a Chieftain must have a sound, capable mind that is well-versed in tactics, that is also better than the finest Warrior available. Should they wish to fight, and are capable of fighting, they are free to do so. Otherwise, conflict is left to those who have consigned their whole lives to it, until they choose to lay down their arms. 

Again, you restate that you are not sharing your thoughts with him. Here and now, you are in command, and he will act as you ask him to act. In return, you will protect him with all your ability, and place the value of his life above your own. That is what it means to be a Warrior. That is why you fight for the innocent, slay monsters, and lay to waste those who threaten Reality. As a Tuzi, especially one who claims to be a Chieftain, he should know better than to try to impart any measure of control of you, because of tradition, respect, and the most basic reasoning. 

“…I understand.” Your well-spoken, Chieftain counterpart nods once. There is the slightest of tenseness to his body, while the two of you increase the distance between yourselves and Lucifer, but he reestablishes control over himself with ease. That earns him your respect. If he is willing to listen to your words, maintaining the tradition of the Tuzi, and can look past his own pride, he is most certainly a Chieftain, because he has earned that right, not because he merely wished for it. "Then, my self, what do you wish for me to do?”

Having been planning how to utilize the effects of his lullaby since you’d heard it and seen its effects, you readily share your plan with your other self.

He looks to you as though you are insane.

“You absolutely insane! That’ll never work!”

You disregard both the look and the words.

…

“I see you’ve decided to stop running, wretch.” Lucifer doesn’t look to be in the same shape as you’d first met him. While your destruction of his Phantom did little to damage him, that Lullaby has turned what was left of Li Song within his body against him. To the untrained eye, especially with that snarl upon his face, he seems unharmed. However, you can tell that he has been shaken, and that there is inner turmoil within him. Perhaps, even, wrath is the only thing that’s allowing him to overpower your “self” that is within him. His rabid anger and hatred of your and the Chieftain is enough for him to overcome the attempts to take control for him. And, if you die, he’ll be able to curtail the remnants within him with little effort. He truly thinks and acts only as a weapon. “However, if you believe that some subservience will save your from a prolonged, painful demise, you will are gravely mistaken. I will see you and that other with your heats bared and lungs pierced, while I grind your bones to dust.”

You are not impressed by his attempts at intimidation.

However, you do ask him if he’s familiar with sonic weaponry… and what a sonic cascade is. 

Given the fact that Lucifer has have some semblance of competency and ability in regards to military matters, you’re unsurprised to find shock and rage contort his features instead of confusion. However, that matters very little, as you’ve already lured him into a trap, and have no interest in hearing him blither on and on. 

You activate the sonic artillery you’ve concealed and powered beneath hologram projectors dialed in at your position. They are supplemented by the sonic mines that you’ve left at your feet. Indeed, as you’d expected, in his rage and anger, Lucifer had not bothered to be cautious. Indeed, he probably hasn’t even noticed how you’d concealed the crystalline-explosives utilized by sonic weaponry to further enhance their effects all around you. If you remember correctly, a properly prepared area, when struck by JSDF sonic artillery, turned Chimera into nothing more than red dust.

It’ll hurt a little.

“You fool! This’ll cripple us both—

Again, you had little interest in listening to Lucifer.

You activate your trap.

You briefly experience a single moment of all-encompassing pain, lose all your senses, and become nothing more than a mind wreathed in darkness and solitude.

You do not know how long your state of being, bereft of any feeling except pain across every inch of your body, with your bones nothing more than shards within what remains of your flesh. 

However, you know that time is short, as you feel something familiar press into your sternum, which you immediate activate on instinctive whim.

The pain becomes a mere strange sensation, as you reconstitute yourself fully, before the Chieftain.

“He’s healing more quickly than you! We need to start right away!” You have little time to consider the efficiency of your Nemesis Crystals. While you typically have them on your companions, you found that your entire stock is on your person. Since they are the source and fuel of your power, each one holding what you did not spend, they are effectively extra “lives” for you to expend for yourself and your companions. However, in situations like this one, healing instantaneously is vastly preferable. The sonic attack had rendered you immobile, but with your regenerative abilities and vast amounts of power, such an attack would’ve slowed you down at best. However, if you were expecting an altogether different attack, you would never have considered your opponent causing severe damage to themselves, only to heal themselves through an ally, while rendering you immobile. Thus, that was how you’d attacked Lucifer. “Can you do something to slow him down—

You enshrine the shattered, bleeding corpse in an salvager. The machine, nearly two stories in size with its accompanying power source, is meant to dissect Chimera with utmost efficiency. The LRU fields hundreds of them, alongside armored battalions, in order to produce ammunition, armor, parts, and even whole vehicles from the corpses of Chimera. While the thick, armored chitin of the Chimera can resist small arms, such as your pistol, and provide defense against powered-armor heavy weapons, which is the mainstay of ground troops, it and the high-density muscle beneath typically part with utter ease due to the machinations of the salvager.

The industrial lasers meant to carve through the gigantic monsters barely manages to do any damage to Lucifer’s body and slow his rate of healing. 

Still, that damage was to his frontal lobe, and that will slow his overall ability to act quite conclusively. Still, given the fact that your creations disappear in a few moments, you have a limited stock of the salvaging devices. While you can summon another to do the same action, once the action is judged as complete, your construct disappears. Thankfully, the LRU believed in having plenty of backups of such machines, otherwise you’d be limited in your options. 

Too limited to undo what damage has been done to the First Sword… or at the very least make a something that can put Lucifer down from what you can salvage of the blade. 

…

The work was both tiring and gruesome, but you succeeded in the end. Lucifer’s First Sword, after you’d dispelled the enchantments he’d forced upon it, broke into dozens of shards. However, each one held an echo of the First Sword’s power, and the enchantments he’d rendered onto it himself. Thus, with a dozen shards of the all-cutting, anti-magic blade, you’d rendered Lucifer perpetually trapped within his body. 

An onlooker will look upon “your” form and see nothing wrong. However, you’d painstakingly placed the dozen shards of the First Sword in critical locations of the body, to prevent it from moving again. Eight went for each elbows, shoulder, ankle, and knee. Two are forever lodged in his brain. The other two block his brain from reaching his spine, as they are embedded into his neck. They are all within the body, ensuring he can make no movements or even think, but his regeneration is frightening to behold. “You” look like you are simply sleeping upon a plain, formless floor. Without the anti-magic properties of the shards, and the First Sword’s innate abilities, you’re sure that Lucifer would be up and about instantly.

Killing him is impossible, but sealing him away is not.

Though a skilled enough surgeon, with the tools that can pierce his flesh, can awaken him with utmost ease, you’re rather proud of your slapdash efforts.

You have, after all, managed to defeat Lucifer.

“So, what now?” The Chieftain speaks to you. His voice is tight. However, it is not because of your actions. No, his voice is tight because he doesn’t wish to attract the attention of the being that hold onto the leg of your pants. To soothe his fears, you attract her attention by pressing your hand upon her golden locks. No sound comes from her in return, but you take heart in how she presses herself into your palm. The largest fragment of the First Sword had been large enough to be considered a “sword.” Naturally, you’d Ascended it without a thought. The result is a quiet, fearsome creature who has been hurt, harmed, and rendered into a shadow of its former self. But, you see a semblance of Occisor in the smaller, mute girl’s eyes, so you shall see her be happy. “What do we do next?”

Indeed, that is a question that you must carefully consider. 

Where to go next, with Lucifer’s body in tow, in this formless expanse of white on white? 

No sooner do you pose the question in your mind, than you find yourself with a familiar source of magic in the distance. 

Somewhere here, is someone you know.

“Who?” The Chieftain asks.

Your friend, you simply say, someone you trust implicitly.

Thus, with Lucifer’s body afloat with you, and allowing the shard into your arms, you take flight.

Your heart is lighter just knowing Hyoudou is nearby.