Deadly Resolve Killing Spree

The Aftermath Wasn't Peace. It Was War.

Renji hardly had a moment to breathe. Bodies crumpled over the warehouse floor, puddles of blood pooling below them but the fight wasn't over.

There were more Syndicate soldiers on the way.

Dozens.

Armed. Armored. Hungry for his blood.

And Renji had one thought only.

Kill them all.

The Onslaught Begins

The first wave rushed in a f*cking stampede of armed assassins, here to collect the bounty on his head. They arrived with blades, guns, and an insatiable thirst for blood.

Renji greeted them with steel and fury.

"The sword itself became an extension of his rage.

The first attacker lunged a machete flashing toward Renji's skull.

He sidestepped, and the katana sliced across the bastard's throat, cleaving meat like wet paper. Blood spewed from the wound as the man gasped for his final breath.

Renji was already on the move before the body hit the ground.

He twisted as a second enemy brought up his shotgun

too late.

The blade sliced through his forearm, and Renji's gun dropped to the floor, along with his severed limb. The man's scream had barely escaped his throat before Renji thrust his katana directly through his eye socket.

Squelch.

The blade slid through the soldier's brain with a crunch. His body jerked before he slumped, one hand still twitching.

Renji unshackled his sword, showering the cracked floor with brain matter.

But there was no time for second guessing.

He turned just as another enemy rushed him, twin daggers drawn.

The bastard was quick, a wild rabid beast, slashing high and low at Renji's torso.

One edge caught his ribs and cut deep, but Renji did not flinch.

Pain was just a whisper.

Renji seized the assassin's wrist, twisting it until bone cracked like a dry twig. The man screamed then Renji kicked him to the floor and shoved his blade through the middle of his chest, pinning him to the ground like an insect.

His victim wheezed, foam pooling in his mouth.

Renji torqued the sword viciously, guaranteeing a long, torturous death before pulling it out with a slopping, disgusting rip.

"Next," he growled.

Ayame's Gunfire Symphony

Ayame was a tornado of death.

She squatted low and fired twin pistols, the recoil punching every muscle in her arms as she emptied round after round into the oncoming wave of mercs.

One man she shot in the knee, to start, causing him to lurch forward yowling. As he began to drop, she shot him again, this time in the temple.

Brains and bone sprayed across the floor.

Another came at her with a combat knife, shrieking like a madman.

Ayame ducked beneath his swing, stuck the barrel of her pistol under his chin, and pulled the trigger.

His head fucking exploded.

Blood, teeth, and skull shards splattered onto her face, and she didn't flinch she just kept shooting, reloading, and killing.

Sora's Wrath

Sora raised his shaking hands, breathless.

His nose taped up and blood oozing on his face, his body all but spent but he wasn't finished yet.

In one last surge of his mind, he tore a telekinetic wave through the battlefield.

It tore through the air, sending half a dozen men over the remnants of a jagged, collapsed wall.

Their bodies struck the rusted steel rebar, piercing them through.

One attempted to scream, but the jagged metal had already pierced his lungs he could do nothing but convulse as blood poured from his mouth.

Another, which was missing the lower half of his torso, convulsed violently before going still.

Sora wiped the blood off his lips.

"That's… more like it."

Renji's Bloodbath Continues

The last few Syndicate soldiers hesitated now, watching the slaughter unfold before their eyes.

Renji smirked darkly.

"No going back now, motherf———."

A man, brandishing a katana, is yelling with wild rage. Renji sidestepped, slashing the tendons behind the bastard's knee.

When the man fell, screaming in pain.

Renji didn't allow him to suffer for long. A scrupulous defenestration put him out of his misery.

His head rolled across the floor, severed, eyes agape, frozen in shock.

Two more assailants followed one wielding a combat axe, the other brandishing a chain lined with razor blades.

Renji intercepted the axe, his blade crashing into metal and producing a storm of sparks. His boot smashed into the attacker's shin, breaking bone.

The man staggered forward, and Renji shot his blade all the way through his mouth, the tip exploding out the back of his skull.

Blood poured the length of Renji's sword, and he kicked to dislodge the corpse from his blade.

The last remaining enemy, the man with the chain, saw the carnage, dropped his weapon, and turned to run.

Renji wasn't going to allow that to happen.

With a swing, his katana flew through the air, cleanly slicing through the coward's spine, cutting his body in half at the waist.

His upper torso struck the floor first, his bottom half crumpling a second later in a disgusting pile of intestines.

Silence.

All that was left was the sound of dripping blood.

The Aftermath

The warehouse was a graveyard of dead bodies.

Blood soaked the walls.

The reek of death and gunpowder hung heavy in the air.

In the middle of it all, battered, bleeding, but victorious, were Renji, Ayame, and Sora.

Ayame wiped her mouth, flinging blood from her fingers. "Holy fuck."

Sora fell onto his knees, panting. "I… I guess we just killed thirty fucking people."

Renji breathed in slowly, raising and lowering his chest.

"…Good."

He had recovered his sword, sheathing the blood-drenched blade.

But as the bodies were cooling, he knew…

This was just the beginning.

Kazimir was still out there.

And next time, the Syndicate wouldn't merely deploy mercenaries.

They'd send monsters.

Renji popped his neck and looked cold, unreadable.

"Let them come."

The warehouse had turned into a slaughterhouse, but the night's slaughters were just beginning.

Renji Kisaragi stood among the bodies, the sword in his hand dripping with fresh blood, the thirst of fatigue pulling at the joints of his arms and legs, but his breath steady. Around him were the bodies of Syndicate assassins, bludgeoned and mutilated, with severed limbs, heads split open like ripe fruit, and intestines spilling from ripped-open bellies.

And yet, more were coming.

A second wave of mercenaries flooded into the gutted warehouse, lured by the promise of Renji's black bounty a price high enough to make any man forget the smell of death.

They ought to have retraced their steps.

No, a halberd should be used to go to war, not to chop down peas. Instead, they were running directly into the Phantom Reaper's wrath.

Hell Unleashed

The first one came in, a twin-bladed sickle whirling in his hands, mouth twisting into a maniacal grin.

Renji let him come.

He dodged the attack at the last moment, grabbed the assassin's wrist, and twisted savagely. Bone cracked like dry wood, the sickle tumbling from numb fingers.

Before the bastard even got a chance to scream, Renji shoved his blade into his gut, angling it up and through his ribs, bursting out his back.

The man wheezed wetly, blood pooling at his lips.

Renji didn't allow him to suffer.

He yanked free his sword, spun, and in one clean motion severed the man's head.

The body fell first.

A moment later, the head struck the ground.

The next three enemies paused merely a moment.

It was a second too long.

Renji was already on them.

His sword sang in the air, the edge of its blade slipping between the first man's collarbone, cleaving downward, cutting almost in half. Blood gushed like a geyser, drenching Renji's face and hands.

The second assassin lunged, a knife point directed toward Renji's ribs.

Renji had seized the bastard by his throat, had slammed him against a green, rusted steel beam, and had shoved his katana right through his heart.

The assassin gasped, his body writhing as Renji twisted the blade grotesquely, maximizing the agony before giving it a sharp yank.

The third man turned to flee.

Renji wasn't going to let that happen.

A sudden release of energy sent his katana flying like a discus, its edge biting into the neck of their backpedaling quarry at the base of his skull.

The blade stabbed deep, cleaving through flesh, muscle, and vertebrae.

He fell immediately, twitching and then lying still.

As Renji approached and pulled his sword from the corpse, the wet schlick echoed through the air.

More enemies surged forward.

And Renji welcomed them.

Ayame: The Bloodstorm

Ayame was a phantom all across the field swift, unerring, lethal.

A merc with a shotgun trained on her, but she'd already been ducking, rolling forwards, firing two exact shots into his chest.

The first bullet shot through his ribs. The second ripped his heart to shreds.

He stumbled backward, dropping his weapon, fell down in a puddle of blood and ruptured organs.

Ayame didn't stop.

She spun dervish, dual pistols spewing death, rounds shredding Syndicate flesh.

From behind, a man lunged at her with a machete.

Without looking, she spun her arm back and shot, the bullet boring into his body right under the chin, fracturing his jaw and blasting the back of his skull out against the wall in a spray of brain matter.

His dead body fell to the ground.

He thought he had a chance against another enemy.

He charged forward with a combat knife glistening in his hand.

Ayame dodged, seized his wrist and threw him onto his back, stuffing her gun into his eye socket.

Boom.

His head exploded like a melon; fragments of his skull rained onto the floor.

Her hands, her arms, and her face were soaked in blood. But she didn't care.

This was a massacre.

And that was only the beginning.

Sora: The Psychic Executioner

Sora's vision blurred. His body felt dragged through fire, but he wasn't finished yet.

He charged the Syndicate mercenaries in a close formation, looking to surround him.

Amateurs.

His hand opened, fingers shaking then a fist.

The atmosphere around the soldiers suddenly buckled.

An astral force pulverized their bodies instantaneously.

Ribs broke, organs burst, and skulls cleaved open like thin eggshells.

Blood spewed from their mouths, noses, and ears.

One man was blown in two, his torso disconnected from his legs, his spine dangling like the end of a wire that had just been snipped.

The others gave a violent twitch, their bodies twisting at odd angles and then falling in a jumble of broken bone and ripped flesh.

More enemies charged.

Sora raised his hand a second time and this time, he didn't just crush them.

He raised them into the air trussed like puppets on stringless marionette wires.

They howled, wrestling against his grip.

Sora closed his fist again.

They f*cking exploded.

Blood and viscera spewed on the walls, their shredded remnants dropping to the ground in wet clumps.

Sora knelt on one knee, breathing heavily, blood dripping down his nose.

"Goddamn … that hurt," he muttered.

But he smiled.

Because they were winning.

The Final Wave: No Mercy

The last wave of Syndicate goons kicked open the warehouse hardcore killers, desperate and hungry for revenge.

Renji inhaled deeply and rolled his shoulders.

"Let's finish this."

He dove into the mob headlong, blade through flesh with silk.

He cut a man's belly open, intestines spilling out on the ground.

He pivoted, cleaving another's head with one stroke.

He thrust his sword through a man's open mouth, the tip exploding out the back of his skull.

He didn't stop.

He cut. He stabbed. He killed.

Until there was nothing but bodies.

Until the floor was coated in blood.

Not until he found himself in the middle of a battlefield strewn with corpses, his sword drenched in the lifeblood of dozens of men.

Ayame stood close, panting, her pistols dry.

Sora was slouched against a broken column, eyes earnestly glowing, breath shallow, yet victorious.

It was over.

They had killed them all.

The Aftermath

The warehouse was silent.

The only noise was the drip-drip-drip of fresh blood collecting on the floor.

Renji wiped sweat and gore from his face, taking a slow exhale.

"We have to fucking get out of here," Ayame muttered, reloading her guns.

Sora cleaned the blood from his nose, tired but pleased.

Renji nodded. He took one last glance around at the pile of corpses they left in their wake.

And he smiled.

"Let them send more," he said in a whisper. "We'll kill them all."