Slaughter part 1
Conor was resting within the warehouse, where he had found the now-dead Flaxan soldiers.
He was wrapped in a cocoon of shadows, given physical form as the shadowy forms of the thugs and Flaxans began to become one with the shadows inside the cocoon, their forms disintegrating in place and becoming small dots of purple shadowy light which then slowly but surely fused with Conor.
Conor initially had a basic set of clothes that the hospital had lying around, but by the time he had run into the Flaxans, it had been replaced by a cloak of shadow, until now, the cloak appeared to be anything but physical.
As the small purple dots of shadowy energy merged with the shifting cloak of shadows began to take on the texture of hardened leather, which draped softly over his chest and shoulders, while the originally nonphysical hood took on the appearance of dark velvet before draping over Conor's dark hair and his dark eyes could be seen underneath to contain a persistent purple shimmer just under the surface.
Clawed gloves appeared on his hands, made of a fantastic mixture of leather and a strange, dark metal, which formed a protective over his hands and forearms.
Dense purple shadows swirled around him before condensing in the center of his cloak in the form of a shimmering purple gem, before it sank into the chest cavity in the center.
WHOOOSH
The shadowy aura around him suddenly intensified into a storm-like gale, spinning around him like he was lying within the heart of a tornado, and Conor closed his eyes, feeling the strange energy coursing through his entire being like his entire body was being empowered by the shadows.
RUMBLE
The tornado around Conor began to condense into a titanic wall of practically liquid darkness that made him think of a tidal wave that began to move towards him with furious precision.
"AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Conor's eyes shot open, and the purple light in his eyes suddenly ignited into dark flames within his irises in response to the tidal wave crashing into him and entering through the gem on his chest.
It felt like his body was about to tear apart at the seams, but through sheer grit and determination that he had developed as an astronaut, he stomped his feet in the shadowy cocoon and roared.
"AAAHHHHHHHH!"
The purple gem on his chest suddenly erupted in brilliant purple light, which then split off into tendrils of shadow that began devouring the cocoon itself.
Within mere moments, the cocoon is split open, and the rest of it, which wasn't devoured, fell past his shoulders like a cape.
Conor fell to the ground, and his shadowy hood billowed out like the wings of a massive bat before he rose to his feet.
He raised his hand and instinctively felt a connection to the shadows both within him and around him, and when he squeezed his hand, the shadows around a metal pipe suddenly squeezed around it like a vice.
WENG
The sound of the metal warping under his power caused Conor to take a few steps back in shock before he stumbled on something and fell over.
CRASH
Conor fell onto some loose boxes, causing a cacophonous noise to ring out throughout the warehouse.
When he looked back up, however, his purple eyes shimmered in shock.
"I... Is that a corpse?"
The corpse appeared desiccated, like all of the blood was forcibly removed from its body or was spontaneously evaporated, but what caught Conor truly off guard was the fact that the corpse did not appear to be human at all.
He eventually noticed the others, each and every one with a look of horror on their desiccated faces.
Eventually, after coming to his senses, Conor left the warehouse and entered a part of Chicago that seemed to be experiencing blackouts.
Taking a step on the sidewalk, a flickering light-post illuminated Conor, and the shadowy cloak he was wearing seemed to meld into his shadow, grabbing onto his arms and chest, he could still feel the soft and shadowy velvet as well as the leather.
He moved his hand outside the shaft of light and watched with shining eyes as the shadows reformed the gauntlet instantly before pulling it back into the light and watching the leather and metal melt into the darkness of his shadow.
Eventually, when he was no longer mentally enfeebled by the sight of the strange, shadowy suit, he moved towards the direction of the inner city and was nearly at the edge of the warehouses when a massive door to one suddenly erupted outward.
BANG... CRASH x2
The massive doors spun in the air before one of them smashed into bits against the wall of another warehouse, while the other slammed into a parked car whose passenger was luckily not present within the vehicle.
Conor moved closer to see what was going on, but when he reached the edge of the building he was using as cover, his instincts suddenly flared, and he stopped just before his head passed the building.
"This feeling... what pressure is this?"
He thought as he hugged the wall and poked his face out to take a look.
The moment he did so, he saw a young man emerge from within the darkness of the now dark warehouse, however.
CRACK
A bright bolt of lightning suddenly lit up the surroundings just enough for Conor to see the blood covering the young man's body, which trailed behind him into a room where a few bodies were clearly piled on top of each other.
However, before Conor had the chance to feel shocked, he noticed that the young man was looking directly at him.
Conor jolted back a few steps and put the building between him and the strange young man, however, it was already too late, and in Conor's experience in his past life, playing games like DOOM ETERNAL, he knew this would be the moment the boss music starts
BOOOOOM
The wall he hid behind before suddenly erupted, and the young man, seemingly feral, rushed towards Conor with his hands raised on either side into claws.
"AAAAAAAHHHH!"
White foam spilled from his mouth as he dashed toward Conor, who instinctively put his arms into a cross guard, when suddenly the shadows around him followed suit.
The shadows around him suddenly erupted to life and twisted together, forming dual tendrils of shadow given physical form.
BANG
The young man slammed himself into the tendrils, and Conor began sliding backward, despite the shadow tendrils holding up under the force.
He could feel the first one beginning to show signs of cracking under the sheer force it was struck with before the young man began to punch the tendril with wild abandon.
BANG
BANG
BANG
BANG
BANG
BANG
After punching wildly three times with each hand, the young man's bones had become visible, and Conor could see the flesh wriggling before sewing back together, but something was strange about these bones, as unlike human bones, his appeared to be somewhat crystalline and gave off a subtle purple light.
Conor waved his arm, and the weakened tendril slapped the young man away with such force that he crashed clean through the wall of another warehouse, creating a dense cloud of dust in his wake.
Suddenly, the dust billowed outward like a needle as someone shot through like a bullet, and Conor was not given the time to put up a guard this time.
CRACK
A hand grabbed onto Conor's face and slammed it into the ground, causing his head to erupt in a shower of blood and gore.
"AAAAAHHHHHHHH!"
The berserk young man roared into the sky, and lightning cracked, showing his bared fangs and predatory countenance.
However, before he could celebrate too long, a thick tendril of shadow suddenly sprang to life and slammed into him with such force that it knocked him into the air and in the path of an incoming police helicopter, which managed to move out of the way before the young man could slam into it.
Conor's head was forming out of the very darkness around him as he looked up at his handiwork.
"Policeman: Dispatch, be advised we have a superhuman brawl going on in the warehouse district, please notify the GDA!"
He only had to wait moments before he got a reply.
"Dispatch: Acknowledged, maintain a safe distance and observe, over and out!"
The young man continued to climb in the air for a few moments before his momentum ran out and he began falling towards the Earth like a rocket.
However, something deep within him suddenly stirred to the stimuli of falling, and indeed deep inside the young man to his very bones, strange sigils began to form on his near crystalline bones in their entirety.
Conor was waiting below with his arms cupped like he was about to hit a beach ball, and his shadow tendrils did the same, forming a shadowy pair of hands that took the same movements as him.
His eyes flashed with anticipation as he saw the young man continue free-falling towards his position, however, before he could come into the strike zone, the young man's downward momentum suddenly stopped all at once.
He floated there with an equally confused look on his feral face, but soon, through instinct, he began to slowly move back towards the sky.
Performing a series of quick loops and maneuvers he gains some semblance of mastery over flight before returning his attention to Conor who had a look on his face as if he was questioning life.
"What the hell? is this DC or something?"
He thought as he closed his eyes and turned the hands into a spiked club and prepared for the young man's attack with the club in a bat-swinging position.
The young man continued unabated and even gained speed before he was almost on top of Conor, who swung his spiked club towards the young man's chest with full force.
BANG
The club makes contact, but no one is sent flying.
In fact, in Conor's shocked eyes, he can see the young man holding the shadow club with one hand while reaching towards him with the other.
Conor panicked when the young man nearly clawed at his face and, out of pure instinct, threw his hand up, and a series of shadowy spears emerged from the ground and pierced the young man from multiple directions.
The young man went limp, blood poured like a waterfall from his wounds, and Conor thought that he was dead, so he came close in order to close the young man's bloodshot eyes, but the moment he was about to reach for the young man, those very eyes snapped onto his face before in front of Conor's very eyes the wounds suddenly weaved back together.
"AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!"
Blood poured from the young man's mouth as he twisted violently, causing the shadowy spears to slowly crack under the immense strain.
SHATTER
The spears broke after the young man began thrashing against them, and the spears fell apart as they both fell to the ground.
HSSSSS
Steam poured from the young man's mouth, and the sigils around his bones glowed subtly, causing the nearby rubble around him to begin floating for a second.
Conor's eyes narrowed as he saw this, and he thought, "Looks like a tiger about to pounce on some prey!"
And he wasn't wrong.
BOOOM
The air behind the young man exploded, and before Conor could even react, the young man's hand was piercing through Conor's back, causing him to spit out a mouthful of blood.
The young man altered their trajectory with his new flight powers, and suddenly Conor found himself shooting towards the ground with such force and speed that the air around them had become hot.
Soon Conor collided back-first with the ground, and the ground around them suddenly erupted violently, and despite his new powers, Conor was unable to prevent the force of the landing from turning his body into pink mist, as now there stood only a single bloodstained young man.
A group of GDA soldiers suddenly appeared around the young man and, unable to discern his identity, began to fire lethal shots when the young man lunged at them.
However, behind the young man in the crater, where the young man was previously dense swirling shadows condensed into a new human body, which suddenly opened his eyes.
GASP
Conor shot up and struggled for breath as the last thing he remembered was the pain from the impact before everything turned to black.
However, he turned his head to see the young man tearing the limbs off a few desperate soldiers who were fighting for their lives, with a few having already died helplessly against the young man's nonstop attack.
Three soldiers were left alive after he had finished beheading one with a chop of his hand, and he was slowly approaching the survivors, like a cat playing with its food.
However, before the young man can do anything, thick shadowy tendrils wrap around his ankles and pull him upside down under a lamp post.
"GET OUT OF HERE!"
Conor yelled as he pressed his feet against the edge of the blood-filled crater and used it as leverage to continue holding the young man in place, giving the soldiers the chance needed to escape and ask for super-powered reinforcements.
However, under the combined stress caused by the young man and Conor, the lamp began to warp and eventually snapped in two, freeing the young man, who lunged once more at Conor.
BOOM
Suddenly, with the sound of the sound barrier breaking, the cloud cover suddenly disappeared, and directly in front of Conor, a silhouette shot down from the sky like a bullet from God.
Feeling the threat, Conor suddenly sank into the shadows under him, which then travelled through the darkness like a ghost before he reappeared on a nearby building and observed.
The dust eventually settled, and you could see a dark-haired young woman in a suit that reminded him of this show on Amazon, holding the thrashing young man by his throat.
BOOOOM
Growing tired of his thrashing, the young woman slams him by his throat into the ground and blood shoots out of the young man's open mouth.
The young woman, thinking that was the end of it, turned around with a satisfied and confident smirk and was about to make a call when suddenly the young man shot up like a zombie the sound of his bones snapping back into place causing a visible look of disgust to appear on her face before he lunged at her with his fist raised and she in her overconfidence decided to just take the blow.
CRACK
The fist collided with the young woman, and the sound of bones breaking was heard.
Blood trickled down from the young woman's nose, who was more shocked than anything that someone was able to hurt her.
Suddenly, like the flip of a switch, however, her shock turned into pure killing intent, and she lunged at the young man and with a violent thrust of her flat hand, plunged her hand through his chest and grabbed onto his spine.
An evil expression adorned her face as she pulled forcibly, and from the wound in the young man's chest, a partial semi-crystalline spinal column was ripped out of the opening before she tossed it to the side like trash.
HYAK
He spat out a monstrous amount of blood from both his mouth and the wound before falling over backwards.
It was when he fell backwards that the rain finally managed to clean the blood off of his face, and the young woman's eyes suddenly shot open wide, and she stumbled forward with shaking hands before a feeling.
Conor, who was watching from a distance, had a strange look on his face as he thought, "Do these people know each other, or is she feeling bad about killing someone?"
Suddenly, he sank into the shadows and disappeared while the young woman, in her shock over having killed someone she knew, shot up into the sky and disappeared.
It was moments after the two of them left that a new spinal column was formed in place of the missing one, and the young man's once still body suddenly shot up on all fours like an animal and roared out just as a peel of thunder erupted.
Above it all, William watched in astral form as his body went berserk with a gloomy expression