Gerald stood still in front of his wife`s tombstone, lost in his thoughts. His eyes grew moist, and he quickly wiped them away. Walking at a brisk pace, he reached his office and collapsed into the chair, breathing a sigh of relief. As soon as he leaned back onto the chair, a pair of arms fell on his shoulder. The palms were soft and delicate, adorned with manicured nails that were painted black, clearly showing that they belonged to a woman.
A woman dressed in a yellow one-piece dress with a matching small hat placed obliquely on her head. Her gold-framed glasses gleamed in the light as she leaned into the man`s shoulder and whispered into his ear in a seductive voice
"The scalpel had been dealt with, now we can move forward"
Her sentence ended with a cat-like purr as she blew into his ear. Gerald abruptly turned and flipped her over with a well-practised ease. Putting the brow haired woman onto his lap, he stared into her aquamarine eyes and her flushed face. He held her palms in his hand, and while running his thumb on the tattoos of a compass and a clock on the back of her palms, he said
"What we did was too risky; even if he was a kid, we still underestimated him."
"Well, we did succeed in the primary objective, so that's still success. Anyway, I have fed the drug we secretly brought to my sister and nieces, so do your thing before the effect wears off."
She said as she twirled a bunch of shining grey locks of his and rubbed her thighs against his.
Picking up his phone, Gerald sent a message to someone one and finally they both leaned back onto the chair as she kept talking about things, and he just silently listened to it.
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...
Shirou wrapped the bandages around his injury after spraying a coagulant onto the wound and dressing it. Reaching his room, he sat on the couch with a notebook and a pencil as he scribbled something into it. He crossed off the "dead apostle" written on the list of suspects. Before going to meet Gerald, he had already made a list of possible problems from the available information.
After collecting the 1st hand information from the second owner of this land, as well as examining a victim`s corpse, he could cross off a lot of options. Any newly turned dead apostle can't control their bloodlust this well to not drain their victims dry, and if there were an old dead apostle, then these tracks would never have been found.
Well, shirou, being a newbie, forgot to consider that this might be a dead apostle trying to bait a magus or spellcaster for whatever reason, including experiments or even just to eat for the heck of it. Still, he was lucky that this was not the case, for now, that is.
Taking a deep breath, he stood up, popped his joints, pulled up the hood attached to his coat, and covered his nose and mouth with a mask as he left the hotel he had picked due to its lack of cameras. Moving smoothly through the night, he swiftly approached the location of the afternoon`s gunfight.
Well, being trained by one of the best assassins has its perks. He might not be half as good an assassin as his father, but he easily reached the location of the sniper who attacked him a few hours ago and began to search for traces.
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….
In a warehouse, a group of men were lazing around. Some of them were high on drugs ranging from cocaine to fentanyl, while others were drinking liquor and playing cards while surrounded by wooden crates containing black bags. This was a small hideout of a gang that was responsible for the smuggling of drugs in this district. Suddenly, a dull thud echoed, the lights, either tubes or hanging from the roofs, began to sway, and flicker intermittently.
The men in this state were dumbstruck by this situation, and by the time their drunk minds processed this, another thud sounded alongside a splatter of red liquid then identified as red wine. Turning their head, they found the head and left shoulder of their leader fallen on the card table while his torso spurted blood like a geyser. The sudden terror gripped the adiled people like a bolt from the blue, and a man fueled by drunken courage pucked up their boss`s cleanly cut head and put it back on his neck.
As the man turned back with a self-assured smile, his head rolled down with a thud and landed on the broken bottle of red wine that the now-dead man was drinking. One of the men noticed a shadow moving about in this tense condition and took a shot at the shadow from his Colt, which led to a cascade reaction of men drawing their weapons.
The clicking of weapons being loaded was interpreted by the swish of a blade parting air, and a glowing red blade left a smooth cut on the necks of 3 men huddled together. They fell screaming while covering their neck in pain, as everyone else opened fire towards the black blur holding the glowing sword, only to have several heads pop with headshots from the two matte black Desert Eagles held by the cloaked figure with light blue glowing eyes.
Shirou rampaged through the group of thugs like a wolf among sheep, his blade started glowing a deeper red as it drank more blood from the helpless men. While this started with a steely expression on his face as he killed more, his mouth widened in a slight smile unconsciously. By now, about a dozen men guarding the warehouse from outside rushed in and, looking at the carnage inside, they paused. Despite being a seasoned criminal, they couldn't comprehend this level of bloodshed.
Among them, one man who looked to be in his 60s trembled violently as he watched his companions wail profanities in various languages and rush into the battlefield.
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….
For him, the environment changed to a deciduous forest in the man`s eyes. In the forest, a temporary army tent housed about 20 soldiers in grey uniforms, sitting around a boiling pot of food with stony expressions. More than half of them were tending to their own or someone else`s wounds using old medical supplies. Their single-shot rifles were not loaded, as most of them were damaged by either impact or had been jammed by mud.
Suddenly, one of the men acting as a sentry shouted with horror leaking into his voice
"What the hell is this!"
The group turned around at this and watched a black shadow rapidly advancing towards them through the forest at a rapid pace. Some of the brave men with intact weapons stood upright and took shots at the figure, but to no one's surprise, none of the bullets hit their mark; rather, they collided with the tree trunks and ricocheted off.
"Fuck!, those sweedish bastrads set us up. They heard us into this forest and stopped chasing us even when they had thrice our numbers." Cussed a wounded soldier who couldn't even stand due to both of his legs being broken.
Within that time, the blur became clear, and the men froze as soon as their eyes fell on the hulking figure standing in front of them. Standing on the dry forest soil was a humanoid wolf with disproportionately large fangs and covered in rusty red fur with white streaks. The 7 and a half feet tall monster had bulging muscles all across its body, and its body structure was way different from that of a human, with massive limbs, a thin waist and broad shoulders.
One of its limbs was as thick as a water bucket, and with a howl, the man wolf lunged at the men, who released a burst of futile barrage of bullets. The 1st man to contact those fierce-looking claws was torn apart like a paper figurine. The blood from the eviscerated humans accelerated by the claw of the wolf-man splattered in an arc, and under the blazing moonlight, invoking the imagery of red spider lilies blooming in the forest. The night was a symphony of screams and howls and death.
The trembling old man was finally able to focus back on the present.
As the old man was dealing with the mental scars from the era of World War II, shirou made quick work of the remaining goons, and only the shaking and randomly muttering guy was left.