The rifle blazed to life in his hands, the violent feedback jarring his bones. Yet the creature barreled toward him with such terrifying speed he managed only a three-round burst before he was forced into a desperate barrel roll to the side.
*BAM!*
The werewolf, a blur of matted fur and muscle, slammed into the cargo container behind where he'd stood, the impact lifting the multi-ton structure off its blocks with a shriek of twisting metal.
Rainer rolled, bouncing to his feet, feeling dizzy.
His barrel roll had been poorly executed and his head ended up cracking against the asphalt in the process.
Yet, he kept firing, short, panicked bursts.
The werewolf's head snapped toward him, muzzle peeling back from dagger-like teeth in a soundless snarl.
Suddenly, it bounded sideways, a spring-loaded nightmare, its movements a dizzying zig-zag to minimize the bullets finding its flesh.
It was bloodied now, red patches blooming in its dark fur, which only made it look more savage—a wounded predator with eyes like burning topaz.
Rainer was in a full fighting retreat, trigger finger active, but his aim was most wild.
'Hells! I was never good with rifles!'
*Clack.*
The bolt locked back. Empty.
"Shit!" His expression twisted.
The werewolf saw its opening and immediately launched itself with renewed, murderous ferocity.
Rainer yanked the empty magazine free and hurled it, running.
It bounced off the creature's skull with a pathetic tink, and in the next instant, the beast was in his space, looming, the stench of wet fur and iron filling his senses.
At that moment, he made a trick toss of his rifle up behind him.
A clawed paw swiped for his head, and he ducked, the air above him whistling.
Rifle gently spinning in the air, Rainer spun, shrugging out of his heavy, sodden coat.
The werewolf drew back its other paw for a gutting strike. But then, Rainer flung the coat into its face, shrouding its vision.
He didn't pause, but leaped. A desperate, spring up as his hand snatched the still-spinning rifle from the air.
The scalding muzzle seared his palm, but he gripped it like a club, glaring down at the blinded beast below him.
While still airborne, he channeled every ounce of failing strength, every spark of cosmic will, into a single, hacking downward blow.
*CRACK!*
The sound was of solid steel meeting beastial skull. The rifle stock groaned, the nuts and bolts straining at their seams.
The sequence—duck, spin, blind, leap, strike—was executed in a single, fluid, desperate breath.
Immediately, a pained, guttural WHUFF exploded from the werewolf.
The sound sent a feral jolt of triumph through Rainer, and a savage grin split his bloodied face.
'Battle! This mind-numbing thrill! Oh, how I've missed this!!!'
His feet hit the ground, and instinct took over.
He revved his body like a major-league batter, swinging the rifle butt in a vicious uppercut toward the beast's jaw.
But in the same millisecond, the werewolf lashed out blindly. A massive paw backhanded the rifle, shattering it into a spray of components, and connected with Rainer's side.
The impact lifted him off his feet, and he was instantly ragdolled through the air, tumbling across the gritty asphalt until he skidded to a stop.
Oddly, he came to rest in a posed crouch: one knee down, a palm flat on the road for balance, the other arm extended behind him like a wing.
His battle instincts were returning.
The werewolf tore the last of the coat from its face, shredding it with a furious howl. It glared at him, death burning in its saffron eyes.
Then, Rainer slowly looked up.
The patterns in his eyes ignited, not gold, but a furious, volatile red.
An aura of palpable heat and pressure seemed to warp the air around him, shimmering like a desert mirage. Blood streamed from his scalp, his nose, his hands. His clothes were a ruin of red stains.
Yet he grinned, a wide, ecstatic, bloody smile, as if he were having the time of his life.
The werewolf hesitated, a flicker of primal uncertainty in its gaze, and It took a single, subconscious step back.
Sensing the fear, Rainer charged. A desperate, bloody gambit.
The werewolf, feeling challenged, swiped a vertical column of air. But Rainer feinted left, ducking inside its guard.
He instantly drove a savage kick upward, aiming for the groin. But his foot met only dense muscle, meat and fur.
"Ah! It's female!" he exclaimed, the realization dawning with absurd clarity.
Furious, the werewolf slowly looked down at the impudent human beneath.
Rainer looked up, meeting its gaze with an awkward grimace.
"Uh... Sorry? Miss?" he muttered.
He was promptly snatched up and hurled like a discarded toy, and his body cratered into the side of a container with a sickening, wet THUD.
Blood burst from his mouth a heartbeat after he felt—and heard—the sickening crack of ribs.
He limply slid down the dented steel, propped up against it, barely conscious.
The werewolf wasn't done. It charged again, and this time, with terrifying gentleness, it lodged four claws deep into his torso, pinning him to the metal. Then it lifted him, slowly, until they were eye-to-eye.
Rainer gripped its wrist, blood bubbling from his lips in thin streams.
But she looked into his pained eyes with something akin to respect, and her voice echoed directly into his mind, a cold, psychic whisper.
"You have fought well, GBG enforcer. But the consequences of your actions are too great to consider sparing you."
Rainer scoffed, a wet, bloody sound, as the glow in his eyes dimmed.
"A mere wolf pup... acts high and mighty before me? Heh. I won't lose... next time."
She growled, the psychic pressure intensifying.
"Even fools know when death is nigh. Say your last prayers."
At this, Rainer's eyes snapped back to hers, and the ferocious glow returned, not as a flaring red, but as a deep, gold-burning forge.
"Pray? To whom?" he whispered, each word full of amused spite. "When I'm the only god here."
At that, the golden patterns in his eyes shifted. Alien polygons spun, fractured, and re-knit themselves in beautiful, dizzying, impossibly complex sequences.
The patterns reflected in the depths of her saffron eyes. And from his own, hot blood ran down like tears.
Her jaw slowly went slack.
Rainer smiled, a gentle, terrible thing.
"You do not want to kill me."
The words were not a plea. They were a command, woven into reality itself.
She carefully, almost reverently, lowered him to the ground and withdrew her bloodied claws from his flesh.
"I... Argh!" She suddenly clutched at her head, a psychic scream of pain ripping from her. She quickly turned and fled, a shaded streak vanishing into the maze of containers.
Out of strength. Out of everything. Rainer slid down, collapsing into a sitting position.
The glow in his eyes soon flickered to nothing, even as the twin crimson flow from them ceased.
His eyes instantly blurred, exhausted.
Rapidly loosing blood, a deep, penetrating cold seeped into his bones, as if his blood were being replaced with liquid nitrogen.
He couldn't move, and if he stayed here, he would die. The realization was a numb, hollow weight.
'I'm sorry, Era. I broke my oath. I guess I'll just have to float around in limbo for a few centuries.'
His eyes drifted shut.
'It'll be lonely though... So...lonely.'
*Clack.* *Clack.*
Measured, deliberate footsteps soon broke the silence, approaching on the asphalt. And a familiar, icy-calm aura washed over him, raising the hairs on his neck.
He smiled, not opening his eyes.
"I didn't think you'd find me." He muttered.
"That is my curse..." Came her soft reply. "I always find—what I seek."
The statement carried an absolute certainty, laced with resigned acceptance.
His eyes drifted open, and black heels clicked to a stop before him.
His gaze traveled slowly up: grey suit pants, a belt with a coiled rope and tactical hooks, and a neck from which hung a small, high-end video camera.
Finally, to her hazel eyes.
They beheld him not as a wounded comrade, but as a profound, existential threat.
It was only then his clearing vision registered the handgun with a suppressor held steady, aimed directly at his forehead.
Rainer froze. Then he looked down with a wan, resigned smile.
"I guess you've made your decision..."
Aegates's head tilted slightly, curiosity cutting through the ice in her gaze.
"You won't beg? Plead for the false life you now live?"
"There's no point," he scoffed weakly. "What's there to plead for? Or live for? When your own family kills you despite your efforts for them."
Aegates' grip on the gun trembled; a minute, almost imperceptible shake, and her brow furrowed, eyes sharpening to lethal points. "You never answered, you know?"
"...Answered what?"
"I asked once before...if you were family. I sought to know how much you would give for us. Fight for us. Yet you deflected!" Her voice remained low, but it was a blade of compressed fury. "Should I not be suspicious of your intentions? The drive of whatever creature inhabits the shell it now wears?"
"Ah..." Rainer's smile was one of tragic understanding.
"I see now." He let out a tired, final sigh. "I... have come to know the nature of man across many lives. Thus, I will not plead. Though, you shall have answers. I shall give you four words. They are the cardinal words upon which my soul was woven. Have them and decide."
Aegates frowned. His words confirmed every suspicion. He was an other, an anomaly—a vague, powerful variable in a world already overrun with monsters.
To her, one less could only do good.
Rainer strained to look up at her, then spoke, each word as a drop of blood and essence: "Fun. Belief. Family. Subjugation."
Aegates turned the words over in her mind. Cold, cryptic, an utterly alien combination.
"...Are these your final reply?"
Rainer remained silent, his exhausted gaze barely holding hers.
Seeing this, Aegates sighed, then pulled the trigger.
The gun's sound was a soft, final pfft.
And like a puppet with its strings cut, Rainer's head slumped forward.