The Blood Sceptre [C>B Exam]

Jariel,

The wind wasn’t strong enough to cause the paper in JJ’s hand to flicker. Opened, stretched and smooth, he could read the contents of the letter without trouble. The sky, though, warned of future rain with how dark-grey it turned to overtime. Whatever business he had in this city of diesel and rides, he should hurry lest the cold rain embrace his coat. The proud garments of a Dies Irae Soldier who was reading through a letter from Commander West.

… We have received reports that a gang of miscreants in Motor City have recently come across a very dangerous weapon known as the Blood Sceptre…

A dangerous weapon, indeed, if the contents of the paper and Commander West’s belief came to be true… which was more than likely. A cursed object like that; expected. And now, the gang mentioned were bound by its power, which drove them to mass murder and raids throughout the very city he found himself in right now. He had to hurry and find them, before any more civilians lost their lives to their diagnoses of hallucinations and whatnot. How they ever got in possession of such a dangerous weapon had to be asked, too… but people’s lives came first.

… If you come across the sceptre, do not touch it with your bare hands…

The mission was solid; take the sceptre from the gang. Once it was in his sure possession, he was to report back to her and await further tasks concerning the cursed thing. There was not a second to waste.

Good luck Soldier…

WC: 264/1000

Tucking the letter back under his coat, JJ began his hunt. It was easy tracking down the whereabouts of this certain gang - one just had to follow the trails of smoke rising up in the air from afar. Smoke indicated the presence of large fires, which could envelop a wide area and many innocents without much control. Fires could easily occur with accidents happening in a city named after motors. Motors run on fuel, after all.

At one point, he heard screaming heading towards him. It was when the outline of the red fire curled around most of the horizon in front of him; he was but a dozen meters away from the source of the outburst, a destroyed tank station. The scream came from a cloud of blazes that moved towards him, and only after a second did he make up the contours of a human being caught within the flames. Someone was running towards him, burning alive!

He had no source of water on his person. The quickest action was to flicker his coat over the fires and quench them, suffocate them completely. With how they enveloped the victim’s entire body, JJ sure was fighting a futile battle. When the last embers were slapped away, the victim had already perished… their dying breath embracing his burnt DI Soldier’s coat.

If there was any solace to this tragedy, then it was that the persecutor approached him from the fires too. Up to 11 people, actually; they all ignored the licks of the fires on their skin as if they felt no pain. Their grins were demonic, and in the hands of the front was a long, serrated scythe. That must’ve been it, the Blood Sceptre.

He gently put the victim’s head down to let it rest, covering the person with his coat. No more would fall to these criminals.

The scythe bearer rushed at him, watering out of his mouth. The shedding of blood was all there was to mind, but he was held in distance by a blast of light that charred his face. All facial functions were cut off from him as he fell to his knees, dropping the sceptre that was taking a toll on his psyche.

The others rushed to the sceptre, wanting to be its next bearer. JJ had to end them all, for their minds appeared too broken, too irreparable. He trusted that he held enough skill and prowess to finish them all in a matter of minutes.

WC: 416
TWC: 680/1000

The closest bandit to JJ almost grasped the sceptre with his hands, but a bullet of brass pierced them. JJ held his gun at him, smoke escaping the barrel, and threatened to shoot him again if he so much as took one more step towards the weapon… and that proved to lead to more than just a warning. Another shot was aimed at the poor fool’s heart, killing him instantly as his arteries fell apart.

The others barely batted an eye, too focused on the sceptre. JJ had to grab it, but he couldn’t touch the cursed object of his present problem directly. The duct tape that he borrowed from Illya would come in handy, now, for with that tool, he could seal the weapon’s surface off and thus grasp it without worries. To do that, however, he had to kill the remaining enemies. His Apache Revolver was flicked back into his grip, the openings fitting into his fingers and showing the knuckle-duster that was attached to it.

With a sudden thrust of his fist, JJ tore through the jaw of one of the gang members, but he was quickly surrounded by two others. The third one, while JJ made quick of the two others, grabbed the sceptre and charged at the Demon Slayer without minding the possibility of cutting down his own, two companions.

It allowed JJ to use both as a shield, and instead of being poisoned by the sceptre’s magical prowess, he was gushed in his opponents’ blood. He lunged forward and slapped the weapon off of the last one, breaking the enemy’s arms with a single move. And with a last uppercut, the contents of the poor idiot’s head were splashed upwards, rendering him as dead as possible.

Those knuckle-dusters were no joke…

…

After a stressful attempt at sealing the weapon with Illya’s duct tape - assuming it belonged to her all along, in case if it was borrowed by some other friend of hers - JJ was ready to report back to Amalie. The Blood Sceptre was sealed and in his hands, and the gang were a distant past to him and the lasting inhabitants of Motor City…

WC: 364
TWC: 1044/1000