The First Mission: Part III

Kuro walked through the hallway back the way they came a few minutes ago. He accelerated his steps and was soon out of the door. Kuro spotted three bodies lying at the fence gate.

He quickly ran over there and found the MDF mages they met earlier. Kuro quickly examined the bodies and found that all three had stab wounds on the chest, right through the heart. The strange thing was that there were no bloodstains. Kuro’s gut feeling got even worse. He looked around and found a strange ornate wooden box lying on the ground a bit further. It was empty, but Kuro felt magical energy emitting from it. A dark and demonic energy. Kuro concentrated and sharpened his senses, focusing on that ominous power. He felt that something had come out of the box. Kuro cursed as he followed the trail and discovered that whatever it was made its way towards the facility. He started running towards the entrance again and activated a few spells to accelerate beyond normal human capabilities.

The door burst open as he smashed it with a rock he flung in front of him, rather than stopping to open it. Kuro practically flew down the hallway and smashed the door to the storage hall, where he had left Hinako with the slime. As he entered the room, he immediately noticed slime lumps from all directions flying into the middle and congregating into a big, pitch-black slime, even darker than before.

Kuro also saw the green shining outline of a person, fitting Hinako’s size, completely encapsulated by the slime. Kuro cursed again and extended his arm. A small pillar shot out of the ground to his hand. Kuro touched it and then his lower back. A reddish string of energy connected him now with the pillar. Kuro then leaned forward and pushed himself off the ground. Simultaneously he manipulated the ground to push against him and magically cancelled the gravitational pull on his body, literally shooting himself across the room right into the slime.

Kuro dove in and felt the sliminess surround him. He could not see anything but the human outline with the green shimmering around it. Kuro pushed himself further in until he could reach the shoulder. He grabbed it and then activated the rope of energy still hanging from his lower back. He felt the violent tug on his back. Stubbornly but steadily the slime had to give them free and after a satisfying ‘pfft’ they were free.

After coming to a halt in front of the door, Kuro got up and now saw Hinako gasping for air and shakily getting back on her feet, trying not to slip on the slime. Her clothes started to get big holes in some places.

Kuro looked back at the slime and noticed that it was already thrice as big as before Hinako had blown it up. It also had now green veins throughout its body. It was pulling in all animal parts it could find around it and absorbed them. But unlike before it did not dissolve them but merged with them. A bunch of pig heads got smushed together into a Grotesk looking clump of heads, that moved freely over the body.

Kuro looked back at Hinako who tripped over her slimy self again, cursed and tried to shake the slime off while sitting on the floor.

“I’ll take over from here, get back.”, Kuro said and walked past her.

He felt a sudden heat next to him and then someone grabbing his wrist.

“We had a deal! That thing is mine! Do not interfere!”, Hinako growled threateningly as she pulled herself up.

Kuro turned and saw her body covered in flames, that burned off the slime. He met her eyes and recognized the look in them. It was the same as his, when he faces powerful prey and is about to enjoy a fight. The one Shinoha always told him, he had inherited from his mother. Kuro smiled and stood aside without a word.

Hinako, still covered in flames, took a few steps forward. The flesh-slime creature suddenly seemed to notice her, since his clump of heads turned towards her. The empty eye sockets began to glow dark green as they all focused on Hinako. She wrote a few fiery glyphs into the air, made a few gestures and her hair turned bright red, right as a fleshy tentacle, consisting of mostly cow legs, stretched itself up into the air. Moments later it came crushing down, but she was ready. A blue fireball flew hissing through the air. Hinako let it collide with the tentacle and waited until it burned its way into it. Then she triggered the second part of the spell. The fireball rapidly and violently expanded inside and ripped the tentacle. The blasted off part fell burning to the ground, knocking down rows of empty meat hook racks and a few butcher tables. It was still burning and the blue flame slowly engulfed it whole. The other part, that was still attached to the main body, was also on fire.

Hinako focused and let her blue flames spread over the whole body of the creature. The meaty skin parts began to crackle and crumble. The creature tried to shake the fire off by expanding the burning parts and hitting it against something, But Hinako’s flames spread faster than they could be extinguished and soon the whole body was engulfed in them. The countless mouths the multi pig-headed clump opened in tandem and let out a bone chilling screech. Then the whole body began to pulse. Black slime gushed out of the cracks between the meaty parts on the creature’s skin and upon coming in contact with the flames evaporated and enveloped the monster in a thick blackish smoke.

The screeching went on and hurt Hinako’s ears. She felt that her Flames were being smothered and clicked her tongue as the smoke cleared. Black slime oozed over the whole body. It was now completely black, since all of the meat parts were completely burned. Only some green veins were still visible throughout the body. The head clump moved around, and the pig heads looked like they were searching for something.

The creature seemed to have found what it was looking for, as it began to move. Slowly at first but then accelerating to an unexpected speed. Hinako noticed that it was aiming for the last large pile of meat that was still left in the hall at the opposite wall.

“Oh, no you don’t!”, she growled and began focusing for a spell.

The creature was nearly at the meat pile, but Hinako had finished her preparations. With a swirling motion she traced a pattern in the air and then pointed her index and middle finger at the creature’s head lump. The fire around her body began to flicker violently, making her hair flutter around. The core of her body began to glow, and the light expanded down her extended arm, right to the tips of the pointed fingers. The glowing concentrated there, and right as the creature reached the meat a loud bang was heard. Blue light broke out of her fingertips and flashed across the hall. It hit the creature right in the back of its head lump.

The back side of it burst open in an explosion of flesh, slime and blue flames. It was so forceful that it even ripped open a hole in the wall behind the monster. The body with the remnants of the head lump slumped forward into the pile of meats. Hinako started to breathe heavily but didn’t take her focus off the meat pile. She had hoped that the slime core was in the head and the creature would die if it was destroyed. But her hopes were shattered.

Hinako clicked her tongue again, as she noticed pulsing inside of the pile. She knew that she quickly ran out of time. Hinako’s fiery state boosts her physical and magical power output and allowed her to use certain spells, but it came at the cost of burning through her energy fairly quickly. She had to end it with the next one.

Hinako held out her hands in front of her chest and began to pool her energy between her palms. Glowing lines ran down her arms. The fiery veil got sucked up as well. The meat pile on the other side of the hall began to move. Black slime oozed between the animal parts and instead of the previous multi pig-headed lump it now grew a big black crystal with an ominous green glowing light in it.

Hinako was nearly done compacting as much power as she could between her palms. The creature let out a deep rumble, shaking his whole body. A dozen meaty tentacles grew out from his body, with black crystals at their end. The creature began violently whipping it around destroying more of the walls. Then it used them to begin crawling towards Hinako. Her hair was back to black. She raised her hands in front of her face and opened her palm. A small blue flicker of a flame floated between them. Hinako gently blew on it and the miniscule fireball started floating towards the oncoming creature. The monster did seem to notice or care about the blue flicker coming towards it. Hinako watched them getting closer and snickered.

“Begone”, She whispered and activated her spell as they nearly reached each other.

The blue flicker burst into flames engulfing the monster and with it half of the hall in a blue firestorm. Next came a deafening detonation and the blue flame turned white. Heavy smoke and dust blocked the view.

If Hinako had turned around at that moment, she would have witnessed the surprised and impressed face of Kuro, who had watched the whole thing casually leaning against the smashed doorframe. But she was too focused to see if something was moving in the smoke.

After a while the view cleared and the destruction became visible. Half of the building was no more. The ground was burned black in a circle around fifty meters of diameter. Charred bits and pieces of the walls and roof lay scattered in the direction facing away from her. Smoldering pieces of meat and slime still rained down, but they did not begin to congregate. Hinako breathed relieved and then she turned around with the widest grin that her face could manage.

“Kuro! Did you see that, dude? I got that gooey bastard really go-… Woah! Why the hell are you naked?!”, She exclaimed as she spotted Kuro leaning against the doorframe.

Kuro looked down and noticed that his clothes had completely dissolved.

“Shit… I liked that shirt…”, He said casually and went up next to Hinako.

Hinako turned and pretended to look at her destructive work. Kuro gazed over the remnants of the battle.

“Not bad, kid. Congratulations on completing your first mission.”, He said and held out his fist.

“That means one month of food on your tab!”, Hinako replied with a smile and bumped fist with him.

A part of the wall came crumbling down as they touched knuckles. Both looked at it.

“That’s gonna be expensive, huh… Am I in trouble? “, Hinako asked worried.

“No… not you…”, Kuro replied with a sigh.

“How come?”

“You’ll see… but can you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Could you… at least... try not to look… You don’t see me staring, do you?”

If Hinako had looked at Kuro’s face, she would have noticed that it was bright red, but she turned her head away from him, caught out. That’s when she noticed that her clothes had vanished nearly completely as well and had left her very exposed.

“Oh… “, She noted and began to blush.