Dashing Devil Omnibus 2: Books 4-6, page 166
The sorrow in his silver-haired love’s eyes was because she’d thought he suffered enough growing up and had sought to protect him from learning of their fates. The shame came from seeing that Boyd had realized the ‘transferred’ children’s fate, despite her best efforts. The acceptance was born from the fact that now, he was at least gaining some measure of justice for their deaths.
This was justice for the poor souls who Victory Seeker had murdered, their lives stolen by the man they had looked up to for guidance, leadership, and protection. Boyd turned back to the monster who had been responsible for their care and upbringing. He repositioned his foot over Victory Seeker’s knee as he prepared to continue working through what was, unfortunately, a fairly long list.
“This is for David,” he growled as he stepped down and crushed the joint. It released a hearty crunch and, with all the nerves that ran through it, Victory Seeker released a satisfying wail that he tried, but failed, to restrain.
All the effort Boyd had put into remembering each of their PAC-mates names with Mindy’s assistance was paying off. The Authority, as an organization, obviously didn’t keep an official ledger of all the children they allowed to die or murdered in the pursuit of producing skilled and loyal Heroes. He doubted a record of what had happened existed, even for those with clearances much higher than his.
The only place their names were recorded was in the memories of those who had known them. Boyd thought it fitting to sear those names into the mind of the man who’d always insisted on the harshest of training methods during his final moments. The big demon took on the task like it was his purpose in life.
He repositioned, spoke each name from the list in alphabetical order, and then crushed another part of Victory Seeker’s limbs beneath his foot. Once the man’s left leg was completely destroyed, he moved over to the man’s right ankle. When that leg was paste, he moved on to his arms.
Eventually, the man could no longer restrain his cries of agony, and they were music to the big demon’s ear. Each squishy crunch was punctuated by another wail, and Boyd felt a sense of satisfaction in his heart that grew stronger as he worked down the list. He was slowly but surely paying back this man for his sins—one snuffed-out life at a time.
Boyd had Hope heal each appendage as he went, new skin forming over each gradually diminishing stub of a limb so as to prevent unconsciousness from the loss of blood. After ten minutes of this, the big demon scowled down at Victory Seeker. He’d run out of limbs and there were still more names on his list.
Blowing out a heavy sigh, Boyd asked his angel to make the monster whole again and started over from the ankles. The guilty man required a few more stabilizing uses of Hope’s Power to ensure he experienced every second of his moments in hell. His consciousness attempted to flee with almost every new burst of pain by that point.
Eventually, tears ran freely from Victory Seeker’s eyes, though they were clenched shut. Tear streaks trailed over the rictus of agony his features twisted into. In that moment, Boyd wondered why he had ever been so afraid of this… creature.
Worse, he couldn’t comprehend how he ever could have respected him, even as a naive child.
Once the list was complete, the demon Changed Hero looked down upon the man he’d once idolized. Victory Seeker lay in a pool of his own blood, urine, and feces. Both legs and one and a half arms had been crushed into a bone-flecked paste. The final name on the list, Zachary, had taken the elbow on his left arm.
Victory Seeker squirmed. He was too weak to manage anything else. The man had squeezed his eyes shut through most of it, and grit his teeth as if he could send himself to his happy place through a sheer act of will.
Victory Seeker’s S-Ranked resistance would have made feeling pain a rare experience. His strength, speed, and intelligence had made defeat nearly as uncommon. Perhaps if he had been beaten as a child—as he had beaten Boyd and others, all the while telling them it was endurance training—he might have developed some empathy and not become a murderer of children.
It had worked for the big demon and Silvie, but that didn’t matter now. Victory Seeker was what he was—a monster. And Boyd was what he was—a man who avenged the victims of monsters.
The big demon waited until his old tormentor blinked his eyes open, a hopeful confusion in them that his torment had ceased. When they found the demon still standing over him, glaring down with a hateful resolve burning in the golden depths of his eyes, he flinched.
Boyd watched as the last shred of humanity drained from Victory Seeker's eyes, replaced with the feral look of a beast facing its end.
“Haaahlp…” Victory Seeker gasped weakly. “Mer-ssshha…”
Boyd couldn’t be sure if he was begging for his life or for the release of death, but either way, he was done. The icicle of wrath in his chest had melted as the storm of rage and grief within him subsided. It was replaced by a sense of calm resolution.
“To think we’ve come to this because you thought I wanted to start a Changed rebellion.” Boyd let out a disappointed sigh, having caught that piece of information from the bits of drivel Victory Seeker had spouted before losing his right to speech by castigating Royce.
“As if I would wish for something that would lead to civilian bloodshed.” He shook his head. “It might be something you would do if you were in my shoes, but I was never the monster you painted me to be. I am not like you.”
He paused, letting his words seek in. “There will be no rebellion—not if I can help it. I’m a Hero of the Authority, and I’ll use that position to set an example of what Changed can contribute to our society. I will not call for violence. It is my fervent hope that you are the last person who has to die as a result of the belief that Changed are inherently inferior or evil.”
The big demon knelt beside the broken man. Victory Seeker’s eyes, once brimming with strength and conviction, now contained only fear and resignation. The once-mighty Hero and Mentor had been reduced to a quivering lump of flesh.
Boyd couldn't believe he had ever looked up to this man. As a child, he had even considered him a father figure. Oh, how wrong he had been.
Boyd didn’t need to hear anything further from this man. And now, he was done talking. With a final sigh, he rose to his feet and stood over what remained of Victory Seeker. The big demon lifted his foot one more time, positioning it over the broken monster’s chest, and then stomped down with a fierce finality.
Victory Seeker let out a bloody wheeze as his lungs and heart collapsed, turned to paste as efficiently as his limbs had been. For a brief moment, his pale eyes went wide in a panic that said he wasn’t ready to die. He struggled, the mangled stumps that were all that was left of his limbs flailing in a desperate bid to live, to fight on… to somehow seek victory even as he died.
Then, the eyes that had once inspired first respect and then fear in a younger Boyd glazed over as death’s chill settled within them.
Chapter 56
Boyd stood over the bloody mess that was once Victory Seeker, letting the feelings the sight inspired rise and fall within him like waves lapping at a stony shore. First, there was a deluge of satisfaction, a sense that justice had been served. The pain the big demon had inflicted on him was nothing compared to the pain he had caused so many others.
It would have to do.
Then, there was a superficial wave of guilt that he’d taken such pleasure in the man's suffering. He was quick to remind himself that he hadn’t done it for himself. The pain he’d inflicted was vengeance for Royce and all those children the man had murdered.
It was justified. In fact, after rescanning his memory of what he had done, Boyd realized he hadn’t felt pleasure for doing the act, pure purpose had driven him. Only the initial fight had been for himself—to prove once and for all that he was more than the man who had trained him thought he could ever be.
With that realization came a small wave of pride in what he was able to do. Then, there was a wave of sadness—for Royce, for the children who had been murdered, and for the tiny part of Boyd that still admired and desired the approval of the man he had punished and killed.
Finally, there was a surge of determination, one that was strengthened by each wave that had come before. From this point on, Boyd would use everything he had learned from Victory Seeker to make this world a better and kinder place for the generation that followed him. He would do it for the children who’d once shared the dream. And for Royce, who had made it possible for Boyd to return to that path when Victory Seeker and others had tried so hard to lead him astray.
A delicate hand rested on his shoulder, and he turned his gaze away from the corpse to find Silvie floating beside him. Warmth and understanding filled her slightly glowing, silver-flecked eyes.
“Royce would have been proud to know you avenged him, and that you didn’t pull any punches when you did, Darling,” she assured him. Her sweet voice was soothing. “Now that monster can never hurt anyone ever again.”
Boyd nodded, a small smile settling onto his lips. “Thank you, my love. I needed to hear that.” He sighed softly, glancing one last time at the battered, lifeless form of Victory Seeker before turning to face the others who had witnessed Boyd exact justice from a monster.
Raev and Hope had taken a few steps closer but didn’t approach until he met their gazes, offering small sad smiles as they did. Everyone knew that this was just the beginning of the grieving process, and not a time for true celebration.
Stepper stared at him with what could only be called respect and admiration.
Then the console in the center of the room let out a happy little beep that in no way matched the atmosphere. They all turned to it and saw that the single screen on the small bank of knobs, switches, and buttons had turned green.
It had big white letters across it that read, ‘Awakening Complete.’
The hissing of a pressurized gas escaping through valves filled the room, coming from all around them. Boyd hadn’t spent much time taking in the details of the room—he’d been too focused on Victory Seeker. He now noticed that there were six vertical channels cut into the otherwise featureless concrete walls.
One each on the northern and southern sides, and two each on the eastern and western sides of the chamber.
The ominous hissing sound that echoed in the chamber emanated from towering mechanical devices that rose from the floor in those channels. They looked like a cross between clockwork machines and futuristic contraptions. Their most prominent feature was a glass tube filled with some unknown deep green luminescent liquid. Their glow was somehow unnerving, giving off an eerie aura in the dim light of the large underground chamber.
“Stepper, take…” the big demon began to say before all six tubes rapidly drained of the liquid filling them.
This revealed humanoid figures floating in the air behind the glass. Suddenly, the tubes retracted back into the floor and six figures hovered in the air just beyond them. As one, their eyelids snapped open, and glowing gold eyes scanned the room.
Four were male and two were female. All six had athletic builds, and were painfully attractive—beautiful even. While they had differing hair colors, the hair styles of the men were the same. The men had high and tight buzz cuts. The women had similarly styled hair, long and pulled into a ponytail. They wore matching outfits that looked like white spandex. Their suits had a big golden A embossed on their chests.
Boyd tried not to let that make him prejudiced against them, finding that he really didn’t like the color scheme on anyone but his angel.
The big demon flicked on his Black Flame Vision to judge what he was dealing with. Each figure turned into a humanoid clump of golden motes as bright as Silvie, though something was off when he compared what he saw now to the other Powered he had seen. For one, he had never seen two people with identically colored motes, let alone six in one place. For another, while their three cores were still round, the pathways that ran through their bodies were angular, resembling circuitry more than anything organic.
After a moment scanning the newcomers and being scanned in return, the big demon dismissed his dark flame vision and called out in what they referred to in training as ‘a polite warning tone’, “My name is Dashing Devil, I am a Hero of the Authority. Please identify yourselves.”
Six pairs of golden glowing eyes settled on him, before one of the men said in a disturbingly monotone voice, “You are Changed.”
“Yes, I am a Changed, but also a Hero of the Authority. Identify yourselves,” Boyd growled, making it an order this time.
He settled into a neutral stance that would allow him to move in any direction at the first sign of trouble.
“Under Article Three of The Authority’s Code, all Changed are subject to extermination on sight. Standby for destruction,” the same man replied in the same lifeless tone.
In that moment, Boyd felt a cold sensation coil up inside him that he hadn’t felt in months—not since his Devoted had almost been erased from existence by a wash of the Last Dragon’s actinic breath. This time, it centered on Raev and Hope.
Both were in immediate danger.
Following the newcomer’s words, he and the big demon moved at the same time. The man blurred forward on a path that would take him right at Hope and Raev. Boyd couldn’t be sure, but he got the distinct impression the man recognized his angel had a healing Power and had chosen to eliminate her first.
That pissed him right the fuck off.
Black Flames burst from his extremities, and he let out a primal roar as he leaped into a tackle that intercepted the white blur. His clawed fingers sank into the flesh of the newcomer’s shoulder and side where he got a firm grip on the man as they tumbled across the floor of the chamber.
It had been a long and difficult day. One that left the demon with very little patience when this monotone-sounding-asshat came along and threatened his angel. His claws started tearing chunks out of the man’s side as they grappled, exchanging grips and holds as they vied for dominance in what became a vicious and bloody display of grappling techniques. The big demon didn’t come away unscathed, his elbow was the first joint to be broken when the unknown threat got ahold of his arm at one point.
The man moved with a mechanical precision that matched his voice. He was at least as strong, tough, and fast as Silver. Fortunately, the man’s strength, durability, and speed seemed to be some sort of energy manipulation—meaning it was susceptible to his Black Flame. It still proved to be a dangerous combination.
A well-placed elbow shattered three of the big demon’s ribs and a kick left him with a compound fracture that had both his tibia and fibula sticking through the side of his calf. This all happened in less than ten seconds. Boyd locked the pain away with his Mental Domination and fought on.
To make matters worse, all the wounds that Boyd’s raking claws made started knitting themselves back together right before his eyes. Not only did he find himself in a deadly wrestling match with a Powered with S-Ranked strength, speed, and resistance, but this man had S-Ranked regeneration as well.
Fortunately, he had Hope on his side. Boyd felt the soothing warmth of her healing Power fill him and his injuries healed as quickly as his enemy regenerated.
The battle between Boyd and the mysterious newcomer raged on, each blow dealt and received mending in a heartbeat. The other newcomers floated in their original positions, watching in stony silence. Their golden eyes never left the fight that they evidently had no intent to join.
Boyd caught a glimpse of his loves, who had all huddled together with Stepper in a defensive formation. Boyd sensed Silvie’s desire to join him, but he poured his desperation to keep Hope and Raev safe down her Bond.
Boyd seethed through gritted teeth, releasing grunts and growls while the man he fought remained completely silent. There was absolutely no sign of emotion during their struggle on his face. His expression remained placid, even as his nose, cheek and eye regenerated with half his skull after a particularly well-placed punch.
Boyd couldn’t afford to be distracted by whatever his loves were doing—not while locked in mortal combat with a deadly foe. He focused his attention on the fight, pushing his body to its limits as he battled this seemingly unstoppable opponent. Although his injuries healed quickly, each new cut and bruise only fueled his rage.
Once enough pain built up in the box he’d been tossing it into, Boyd reached out with his mind to set his tether, hoping that his trump card might shift the balance of the conflict in his favor. He was able to set the tether with ease, not having to fight through any mental resistance at all. However, when he dumped the amplified pain down that tether into his foe, there was no effect. The man didn’t even flinch.
Frustration mingled with rage continued to grow within him as the bloody and brutal stalemate held, but he wasn’t out of ideas. Boyd and his loves had often gamed scenarios at the end of a day of training. They’d contemplated how best to counter different Powers they might come up against as Heroes.
It wasn’t the first time Boyd had thought about how he would handle an enemy that could heal faster than he could hurt them. He only hoped that the hypothetical solution they’d collectively come up with if the big demon ever encountered this level of regeneration in the field actually worked.
The deadly wrestling match continued, both parties having exchanged positions numerous times as it dragged on. Boyd had only to wait a bit until he saw his opportunity. He shifted around in a flash, getting the proper angle, then shoved his hand in a knife strike into the top of his enemy’s skull. He drove his arm deep, the man’s head splitting around his forearm and then more around his bicep as he reached deep into his foe.
The big demon didn’t stop until he was shoulder-deep in his foe’s neck.
