He Just Won't Die

POV: Yuzan Hellfire

I would certainly consider myself a decently strong Phoenix, even by the standards of the immense strength a Phoenix naturally holds. Even some of the weakest Phoenixes hold enormous destructive power, enough to destroy a planet. The only reason our planet hasn't been destroyed yet is because 1) It is easily the largest planet in this solar system. If we were on planet Earth, a neighboring planet not even a fraction of our size, we would have been destroyed a long time ago. And 2) Our planet is completely indestructible a few miles below sea level. Nobody knows how, but some act of nature or whatnot caused this planet to become completely indestructible; it was, without a doubt, the biggest stroke of luck we have ever experienced. But while I am nowhere near the power of the strongest Phoenixes alive (SIN, Thanatos, and Dracula outclass me in strength, my own "underlings" stronger than me. Though they thankfully remain loyal to me despite that), I am still a dangerous foe to go up against. However, there is one foe that I am outclassed the most by: fire users. They are my worst match-up because they eat through my regeneration and armor, and Yamamoto is a fire user.

My plan was simple: single out Yamamoto so I could face him alone, essentially gambling on whether I could defeat him. Using help in this fight would be a detriment because it would cause him to use his most powerful attacks, which would easily kill me. No, I needed to fight him at his most cocky and finish the fight as quickly as possible so I don't get burned into ashes. However, there was one thing I didn't account for: one fatal mistake that almost cost me my life. 

As soon as Yamamoto's men were out of the picture, I dashed towards him, turning my right arm into a chain blade and my left arm into a shield. I slashed at him with the blade and used my shield to cover myself from his attacks. He quickly reacted to my attack, dodging the blade and firing off a burst of flames. The blade fell close to his feet, and I blocked his fire with my shield. While the shield would help me at the start of the fight, his flames would melt my metal skin into goo before I knew it. While he was distracted, I transformed the blade at his feet into a spike that pierced his leg, throwing him off balance. It was at that very moment when I needed to make the decisive blow if I wanted to leave in one piece, so I reeled my arm back in as fast as I could and turned it into a spear. But just before I could pierce his heart, he got back up and set off an explosion right in my face; I had gotten too close to him, and I almost paid the ultimate price for it. The blast sent me flying back dozens of feet away, and I would have died had I not fallen into the frozen lake, breaking straight through the ice and becoming submersed in the deadly cold water.

I lay in the water completely still for a few seconds, unable to move with the sudden shock of the water hitting my skin, but soon, my adrenaline kicked in, and I swam back to the surface through the hole I left. As I rose back to the surface, I could see crimson blood, my crimson blood, pouring out of me and painting the ice a deep shade of red. Looking at my reflection through the ice, I saw a dreadful sight that would leave the squeamish frozen in terror: my steel mask was burned off, exposing my face; blood was oozing out of my forehead; my right eye was almost completely destroyed, my jaw was dislocated, hanging loose a few inches to the right, and my nose was almost completely gone. To do that much damage to me, that tiny explosion must have been stronger than a supernova. It might not have been the worst injury I have ever sustained, but it was certainly in the top 5 at the time. But if there was one benefit to my situation, it was that Yamamoto must have been certain I was dead.

Sure enough, the well-dressed Japanese man was limping away from the scene, certain that I was dead. I waited for him to get far enough away for me to launch a surprise attack, almost a full 30 seconds. Sensing the right time to strike, I let out a quick spring of metal from the heels of my feet and used the propulsion to launch myself into the air in his direction. As soon as I was close enough to him, I launched a spear from my right arm, which pierced him from the back of the abdomen. This was a risky move because I needed to use a portion of my arm to launch the spear at him, which shrunk it by a bit and left me noticeably weaker in that arm. Yamamoto reeled back in shock from the sudden attack and turned around to face me, firing off yet another burst of flames at me. Although my shield was almost liquid at this point from his previous attack, it was still able to shield me one last time from that burst of flames. I would have landed a decisive killing blow had he not fired a surge of flames from his feet that propelled him away from my attack. He appeared to be confused about my survival.

"You know, I haven't seen many people that could keep fighting from a blast like that. You must be one tough cookie to tank that."

Trying to stall for some time, I answered his observation, "You have no idea just how much I can take. If I weren't weak to fire, that blast would have done nothing to me, not even dent my armor." While speaking to him, I extended a metal string through my right leg, hiding it in the snow. To prevent him from noticing my shrinking body, I used bits of my back to make the string. He didn't even notice the line tying itself to his leg while I spoke to him (I've never seen someone so oblivious before). He let out a scream of pain as the string around his foot impaled him in a circle of spikes, and he started being pulled towards me. I jumped into the air and launched a kick aimed at his heart, with a blade popping out of my foot to pierce his skin. He tried yet another burst of flames, but I tanked through it and lunged straight at his heart. My attack would have killed him had he not moved away, my blade piercing through the wrong side of his chest, though it did damage his lung. I lunged at him once more with a blade for an arm, but I was suddenly stopped in my tracks by the one thing I had failed to account for, which almost killed me.

In the crucial seconds before my blade pierced his heart, I was suddenly stopped by a voice. Looking to my side out of pure instinct, something I unfortunately had almost no control over, I was met by the unexpected appearance of Mallory, covered in someone else's blood. She looked at me with worry in her eyes, shocked at my appearance, which had only become more horrifying from the previous hit of fire I had endured. She screamed out in pure shock, "Lord Yuzan... Oh my God!!! This is horrible."

"MALLORY! YOU FOOL!!!! GET AWAY FROM HERE IMMEDIATEL-." Before I could finish, I was suddenly hit with another burst of hellfire mixed in with an explosion. I was launched forward at twenty times the speed of sound, hitting tree after tree; they soon tumbled down as I left human-sized holes through the middle of them before a brick wall stopped me once I was launched through the park fence. I could tell without even looking in a mirror that I wasn't looking very good at this point. 

I'm not entirely sure what happened between Mallory and him right after I was gone, but I have a pretty solid picture of what happened. As soon as I was gone, Yamamoto undoubtedly used his Phoenix release. This is something that quite a lot of Phoenixes can do, both strong and weak. To explain, it is essentially when a Phoenix has multiple forms, with some being direct upgrades while others are a different set of abilities that serve a separate purpose from the original forms. While Yamamoto was going to transform in response to my attempted attack on his heart (though he almost certainly would have been unable to complete his transformation before I killed him), seeing the unexpected arrival of another foe forced his hand, and he released his Phoenix in response. His skin would have formed cracks like glass before shattering completely and revealing his stronger form: a flaming demon with wings and a sword. Mallory would have tried to unleash her Ktulu portals, but Yamamoto was been too fast and closed the distance before she could attack. Either a kick or a punch from him sent her flying through the park before the wall of the public restroom stopped her, and he flew to her to finish the job. He then decided he was going to take his time with her and grabbed her by the neck, slowly increasing the temperature of his fist in an attempt to make her suffer before she burned to death. But before he could kill her, he was stopped dead in his tracks by the last thing he had ever expected to be greeted with, something that shook even a hardened criminal like him to his very core.

While he was choking her out, he was suddenly greeted by a voice, a ghastly, dreadful, labored voice, like that of a walking corpse, that said to him, "Hey, we're not done yet. I'm not done with you." Both he and Mallory let out a scream of fear as they looked upon my horribly injured and disfigured form. While I didn't get a very good look at myself during this moment, Mallory's description of my appearance after the fact, which she told to Raven, who relayed the information back to me, gave me a pretty good idea of what I had looked like.

Her description read as follows: "It was the scariest, most brutal, and disgusting thing I had ever seen. Instead of the handsome face of Yuzan I would normally see, I was instead greeted by a man who looked like something out of a horror movie. The top right corner of his face was burned almost completely black, and the other side was even worse! His skull was completely exposed all the way from cheek to cheek. One of his eyes was completely missing, his abdomen was exposed, and I could clearly see his intestines leaking out of him. Both of his arms were sliced completely open, giving me a clear view of the bone underneath. On his left arm, his hand was completely missing, with only a stump left where his hand should be, a sharp bone poking out of it. The worst part of all was that his brain was completely exposed, just barely hanging on to his head, and I could see that a significant chunk of his frontal lobe was completely missing. But what confuses me the most is that it appeared to me that it wasn't due to any of his injuries. I don't know. It felt like that part of his brain had always been missing. Like he was somehow born that way."

Pretty messed up, but at the time, I didn't really have much of an idea how bad my injuries were, nor did I care.

But regardless, I didn't really care for my situation or health at that moment. I was, admittedly, getting rather irritated at how drawn-out this fight was becoming and was solely focused on killing the man before me. He looked at me in complete shock and said, "HOW IN THE FUCK!? There's no way you're human. Nobody should be able to survive what you are surviving. You should be dead!!"

I let out a groan of pain before answering, "It'll take more than this to put me down, a lot more!!" At this point, through my exposed insides, Yamamoto could see how my powers were working. My blood and guts were being stripped away from me and turned into steel that was used to form new weapons on my limbs. While I usually have a stockpile of material to use as weapons, my fights from yesterday drained me of it all, and I was left to use my own body until I restocked on extra steel. I noticed him observing my powers working and mocked him with a boast, "Let's see which will last longer: your flames or my body."

Before I lunged at him, I kicked the ground before me and launched snow at him. While his flames had melted the snow as soon as they got close to him, the water from the melted snow hit him in the eyes and blinded him. Before he could regain his composure, he was met with my fists punching him in the face, with spikes coming out of my knuckles to pierce through his skin. At this point, his flames had been rendered null by my covering myself in snow, which melted into water and put out his flames. He tried to grab me by the neck, but spikes pierced through his hand as soon as he took hold of me. Using the spikes in his hand, I let out blood into his veins, which quickly solidified and started piercing his arm with multiple spikes coming out of his entire arm. His left arm was completely useless, and so he began to rely on his right arm. He tried to fire off another explosion from his arm, but I engulfed his hand in an enclosed cage of steel, which caused the explosion to be contained in the tiny space, blowing his arm clean off. Before he could make another move, I grabbed the shotgun at my belt, which I had been saving for the right moment, and pointed it straight at his forehead. The last thing he saw was the walking corpse of a man saying "Game Over" before his world went black. The blast had blown his head completely off, crimson blood pouring out of the neck that was once attached to a now non-existent head.

While a blast from a regular shotgun would not have killed him, the bullets I use are made from my skin, which results in shells so strong they can blast through a steel vault with ease. The blasts are so powerful that I needed to make my shotgun with my skin. But because it is such a long and drawn-out process to make my bullets, I only use them sparingly. As the blood poured out of his neck, I brought my face and stared down at the fountain of blood. As the crimson blood sprayed all over my face, it started to heal my face and most of my body, making me look almost as good as new. However, I was still left in trouble as only blood from sufficiently strong Phoenixes could heal my internal organs, and he was not a sufficiently strong Phoenix.

Looking at Mallory, I told her, "You really shouldn't have come back here. I could have easily dealt with him myself without you. He would have only used his Phoenix release if multiple opponents cornered him. This was not part of my plan."

Nervously, she answered, "W-well, if you planned to fight him yourself, why did you ask me to come with you?"

"My main plan was for you to hold him down so I could instantly kill him while X dealt with everyone else. Your disappearance caused me to resort to plan B." When the rest of my wounds were patched up, I helped Mallory back up, and we walked through the park. Before leaving, though, we discovered something at the back of the park.

Near the exit, we could see an armored truck that very clearly belonged to Yamamoto, judging how it was covered in the logo of the company that he was using as a cover for his activity. I decided to investigate and opened the door to the back. Inside, me and Mallory were met by the sight of what appeared to be some strange creature that was tied down in chains, struggling against his restraints. It was humanoid in appearance but was wearing a red cloak, a black mask of cloth that covered its entire head, a suit of armor under its cloak, and its eyes glowing a bright shade of green. Noticing us, it screamed out in a labored, masculine voice, "Help me, I don't know what is happening. I just suddenly woke up in here, and I don't know anything beyond that." It would seem that this is what Yamamoto was trying to sell to his friend. 

I started speaking to him, "Don't worry, I'll get you out of here." Stepping into the vehicle, I cut him free from his restraints. He thanked me for my deed before falling to the ground, his legs unable to support him.

"What is going on? Who or what am I?"

"I'm afraid that is a question only you can answer, my friend. What is the last thing you remember?"

"I don't remember anything, really. I remember waking up in some tube filled with some liquid, and then I woke up in here."

"Seems to me like you might be one of those 'artificial Phoenixes' that the Arman Empire has been trying to create."

"Artificial Phoenixes?"

"There has been research going on for decades now on ways to create an artificial human with a Phoenix power, but none have been successful. Or at least, not until now." I've known some high-ranking Armanian officials since I was a kid, so I know a lot about some of their biggest secrets. "I'm sorry to say this, but my guess is that you were born to be a product sold to the highest bidder. Your purpose was to be a weapon to be used."

Hearing my words, the artificial Phoenix began to groan in pain, "NO, NO! THIS CAN'T BE!!! A WEAPON?! I CAN'T SERIOUSLY HAVE BEEN PUT ON THIS WORLD SOLELY TO CAUSE DEATH AND DESTRUCTION."

Mallory then entered the conversation, "You seem pretty knowledgeable for someone who was just born."

Groaning out in fright, he answered, "I don't know how, but I just know everything about this world. Every culture, every subject, every moment in history, every bit of knowledge. It's all too much; I don't know what any of it means. It just keeps pouring into me." At this point, he started holding his head in pain. "All I know about myself is a number assigned to me. My name is number eight."

He seemed to me like a worthy candidate for an ally, so I began to try to convince him to join me at that point. "I know this is hard on you, but the good news is, I killed the people who were keeping you captive. You're free now."

"Thank you. Thank you, kind soul. But what do I do now? I don't know what to do."

"You could try joining me. I can assure you you can find some meaning by working for me."

He hesitated before giving his answer, "I'm sorry, but I think I'll have to think it through. I can't just give my answer right now." He then proceeded to fly off, trying to find some purpose to the existence he was just forced to live through. I did feel bad for him, though; It must be tough to be forced into the world suddenly with no parents to guide you through it. As he flew away, I noticed that the moon was starting to take on a reddish shade. A blood moon was approaching, a common sight in Ulyshia.