Go for the Throat

Hinata laid on the rooftop, her body screaming in pain. She was fairly sure many things were broken in her. If not for her demon physiology, she was sure she’d be dying. But she knew both demons and exorcists took a lot of damage before finally going down.

Harry, though, should have been dead.

Stabbed through the chest, right through the heart, it should have been a kill shot. Fenrir surviving half his brain missing was more plausible. Demons operated on different logic. Exorcists, while powerful, were still human.

“Im…impossible…Harry, you can’t be alive. You…” Hinata said. But his voice rang through her head, a night from the past reminding her who Harry Vickers was. She had been depressed, lamenting how the life of a normal girl was denied to her.

“No boy will want me!” she had yelled into a pillow. Another guy she met online. Another guy who had enough on his plate post D Day to consider being with a chronically sick girl. She had no friends, no life, no future. Simply waiting to die while being a burden to her brother. But Harry knew the word she needed to hear.

“Bullshit,” Harry had said, arms crossed in her doorway. “Impossible doesn’t exist in this world, Hinata.” And he was right. They had survived monsters becoming real. Why couldn’t she survive to lead a full life? The thought had kept her going long after Harry had left them. Do not believe in impossible.

“Impossible doesn’t…no, it doesn’t,” Hinata said defiantly on the roof, getting up on her hands and knees.

Fenrir panted, crouching, waiting for Harry to make his move. Everything hurt. He could see the same applied to the exorcist. “I’m nearly done,” Fenrir said slowly. He lifted a claw, pointing to the ruins of his eye. “One good hit, my brains fall out. You’re pretty messed up too.”

Harry released something between a sigh and a grunt, spitting a red wad onto the roof. “Your point?” he asked.

Fenrir shrugged. “Nothing. Only saying, one of us is about to win. Let’s make it interesting. You beat me, I’ll answer any questions you want. Wouldn’t be able to go back to the yakuza anyways. I’d be considered a failure.” Fenrir laughed. He was so important to Gouki, but importance meant perfection. It was hilarious in its own way. Be the most powerful human. If you can’t, be the most powerful demon. Give up the last bit of humanity and independence you were holding on to. Smiler had seen it in the bar. He couldn’t beat them. He was trash. Merely a vessel for a monster.

A failed joke from a failed comedian.

Harry cracked his neck, standing up as tall as he could. It took all the control he could muster to keep from passing out or throwing up as he did it. “And for you?”

“I win? I kill everyone you love. Slowly,” Fenrir said, his eyes gleaming with a dark light which showed he was absolutely not joking. He was a demon with nothing left to lose.

“Well then…” Harry started to say before catching sight of Hinata. She had a pipe from the construction supplies in her hand. She was carefully sharpening it into a spear with her kitsune claws. “Guess I can’t refuse,” Harry said slowly.

“You wouldn’t. You need to play the hero, like I’m playing the villain,” Fenrir said.

“I’m not a hero like Reo, you crazy bastard,” Harry said, cold and indifferent to the title.

“What are you then?” Fenrir asked, tilting his head.

“A comedian. Let me tell you a joke,” Harry said with a cocky little grin.

“Oh, this should be good. Please do,” Fenrir said.

“Once there was this loser…” Harry started. Fenrir’s remaining eyebrow furrowed, as if he knew where this joke was going. Harry, meanwhile, kept his eye on Hinata, standing ready with her spear. “He blamed life for everything. The whole world was simply a bad crowd laughing at him.”

Fenrir crouched, ready to leap. Clearly he wasn’t in the mood for this joke. Harry didn’t give a single damn.

“Even him surviving was an accident. This sad dick never took responsibility for anything in his life. If he pretended he was a clown, laughter didn’t hurt,” Harry said, grinning through the pain, getting ready for his own move. Fenrir was good and pissed. He wasn’t paying attention to the quiet girl behind him. So when Harry surged forward with the last bit of energy his legs had, Fenrir of course rose to attack. His large frame provided a big target for Hinata to ram her spear through. Fenrir stumbled forward as his eyes went wide with pain and Harry grabbed the sharpened end of the pipe, pulling him closer. “But the laughter did hurt him!” Harry bellowed.

Harry then did something none of them expected. He rammed his right arm directly down Fenrir’s throat. The wolf’s remaining eye went wide with surprise and confusion as Harry snarled the conclusion of his joke. “So when it came time for this asshole to perform…HE CHOKED!”

Sparks and lighting began to flicker around Fenrir’s throat. The demon shook his head, trying to free himself from the insane American's grip. But Harry dug his fingers into Fenrir’s fur even tighter as his hand made a loose fist in his throat. “YOU GET IT, YOU EVIL PSYCHOPATH?! WELL YOU WILL! THIS IS FOR MAKING HINATA CRY!”

The hammer appeared in Harry’s hand like always. However, in this instance it had to clear the way through Fenrir’s head and neck. It blew the monster’s head off like a gruesome dandelion. “I TOLD YOU I’D BRING RAGNAROK!” Harry roared, barely even knowing what he was saying. Fenrir’s body fell, and Harry fell with it, his strength gone. He nearly hit the rooftop when Hinata caught him, holding him close to her.

“Harry…” Hinata gasped, feeling how cold and limp he was. His strength was nearly gone. With great effort he turned his head to her.

“Hey…I think I’m…gonna pass out now…” he rasped as his body went limp against her.

The rain stopped. The storm was over. The clouds began to part, with brief visions of stars and moonlight appearing through the darkness. On the wet, cold, bloody roof, Hinata held Harry close to her, willing him to hang on. “Not until I can say…you can’t leave until I say it...” The possibility of her request coming true was up to fate.

But if there was one man who could beat fate into the shape he wanted it to be, she knew it was her Harry.

Reo burst from the rooftop door moments later. Gaku’s blood was all over his shirt as he ran to Hinata and Harry, kneeling next to them in the rain. Hinata slowly shook her head, though, holding Harry tightly. “Do your job,” she said as she heard police gathering on the street below. She had Harry. He needed to get Smiler.

Reo stood, gripping the containment stone tightly, and he approached the body of the demon. He placed the stone on Fenrir’s chest as the red energy arched from it, pulling the image of the wolf into it until only the unconscious image of Smiler remained, barely conscious and still grinning.

“What a show…” Smiler said weakly.

As police rushed the rooftop, grabbing Harry and Hinata and slamming cuffs onto Smiler, Reo tried hard to not scream into the still cloudy sky.