The veteran vampire, known simply as the Priest by his companions—a title earned through a century of survival, not piety—found his expected target. He was a creature of jaded experience, his fiery vampiric passion long since eroded by the ceaseless, corrupting march of time.
Unable to find true satisfaction or meaning, he had settled into a routine of grim fatalism, often seeking the transient, hazy comfort of synthetic alcohol, even in the heart of the blood den. His membership in the Vampire Guard was a formality; his skill was respected, but his spirit was gone.
Now, deep in the storage tunnels off the main floor, the exotic R-variant mutant he sought appeared, drawn by the frantic sounds of the initial skirmishes. The sight temporarily cleared the fog of the Priest's inebriation.
He raised his customized submachine gun. Despite his existential weariness, his skill remained razor-sharp. He was a veteran from an era when firearms were rudimentary and a single wasted round meant certain death. His burst was a flawless display of controlled technique: silver-plated bullets, the core of the vampire defense, spat from the barrel in a tight, concentrated stream.
The effect was utterly disheartening.
Against the fragile physiology of an ordinary vampire, that barrage would have resulted in an instantaneous, explosive combustion. But the mutant merely jerked and shrieked as the slugs embedded themselves.
They did not vaporize the creature; they merely left behind deep, festering, pus-oozing wounds. The beast was pained, but not critically injured. Its transformed anatomy rendered the ancient vampire poison almost irrelevant.
The mutant's speed was terrifying. It covered the distance between them in a series of shocking, feral bounds, faster than the Priest could cycle another magazine. Before he could adjust his aim, the creature was upon him. Instinctively, the Priest swung the heavy butt of his rifle in a brutal, horizontal arc, aiming for the mutant's head.
The impact was solid, the crack of the stock connecting with the bone audible, but the blow failed to deliver the expected concussion. Instead of stunning or knocking the creature down, the mutant simply shrugged its neck into the blow, using its hardened muscle structure to absorb the kinetic energy.
With a swift, savage jerk of its head, it leveraged the stuck rifle, twisting its wrist to rip the submachine gun clean out of the Priest's grip and send it skittering across the concrete floor.
Disarmed, the Priest reacted with decades of honed violence. He drove a lightning-fast, precise fist strike aimed at the temple—a point-of-pressure strike designed to incapacitate the human nervous system. The blow, lethal to a man, merely caused the alien to buck its head slightly.
Then, the true horror of the R-variant's strength was revealed. The creature grabbed the Priest's outstretched wrist. With a single, explosive pull that defied the pureblood's own immense strength, the mutant lifted the Priest entirely off the ground and hurled his body with malicious, casual force.
The vampire sailed through the air like a discarded rag doll, crashing through a weak, internal plaster partition before landing amidst the wreckage with a sickening thud on the far side of the dance floor.
Across the floor, the disciplined vampire warrior known as Yukio had just finished engaging his own R-variant target. He watched the Priest's defeat—the ease with which the veteran was dispatched, the sheer kinetic power involved—and his characteristic calm momentarily fractured.
They are not targets. They are monsters, he realized, recognizing the futility of traditional vampire-killing methods.
Yukio was an outlier, a true master of ancient Japanese swordsmanship who shunned firearms in close quarters. His presence in the Guard, amid creatures who favored overwhelming firepower, spoke volumes about his deadly expertise. He calmed his mind, sinking into a state of icy focus where every possible outcome was calculated before a muscle moved.
His opponent, a female mutant, immediately engaged. Yukio paced slightly, then accelerated with pure vampire speed. The R-variant responded instantly, its speed a shocking match, even surpassing the momentum of the pureblood warrior.
The mutant charged, relying on feral instinct and raw power. Yukio met the rush, not by bracing, but by drawing on the flowing power of Iaijutsu. As the beast lunged, Yukio—still in motion—whipped the sheathed katana from his waist.
He used the scabbard itself as a block, absorbing the mutant's frontal assault. The mutant, seeking to halt the movement, grabbed the scabbard in an attempt to crush it.
A momentary, mocking glint flashed in Yukio's eyes. This was the opening.
With a powerful, blinding twist of his wrist, he executed the draw. The gleaming, silver-coated blade hissed from the scabbard, its edge catching the strobe lights in a scorching flash. In a single, fluid, devastating motion, Yukio followed through with the draw, bringing the naked blade downward and across the mutant's body.
The blade moved through flesh and bone with almost no resistance, like a hot wire through wax. A furious roar erupted from the mutant, followed by a sickening sound as a severed forearm—still clutching the empty scabbard—hit the concrete floor.
The pain instantly triggered a horrifying physiological response. The mutant reared back, its head snapping violently. Its jawbone began to distort and restructure, forming a hideous, external carapace resembling the mouthparts of a gigantic insect.
A pale, petal-like tongue flickered rapidly from within the new structure, coated in a viscous, noxious liquid. It was no longer a creature resembling a man; it was a pure, ferocious beast , driven by the singular imperative to destroy its tormentor.
The mutant lunged, its terrifying new maw open, attempting to clamp down on the samurai. Yukio remained utterly composed. He had committed to a counter-attack sequence, and he was in complete control of the distance. He backpedaled swiftly, forcing the mutant's powerful lunge to impact the floor with wasted, splintering kinetic energy.
As the beast raised its hideous head for a follow-up strike, Yukio's blade flashed again—a quick, horizontal slash that was more defensive feint than attack. In an instant, half of the alien's mandible structure and a section of its jaw were cleanly severed, making its already horrific face a mask of dripping, pulpy viscera.
The mutant, repeatedly cut and now bleeding from its face and arm, finally showed a flicker of strategic retreat. It charged forward one last time, a desperate surge of latent power born from pain, frightening the samurai with its ferocious speed. But Yukio, the master of space, simply dropped to the ground, allowing the enraged beast to sail harmlessly over him.
A seasoned warrior never stays grounded. Yukio exploded back onto his feet, but even his speed was too slow to fully evade the mutant's frantic counter-attack. A fierce wind—the sound of the charging mutant—rushed from directly behind him.
Without turning, Yukio executed a perfect defensive maneuver. He had memorized the terrain, calculated the angle of the mutant's rebound, and knew precisely where the attack would originate. His sword was already reversing its grip, becoming a deadly extension of his elbow. He lashed out with a back-handed swing, the silver blade sinking deep into the mutant's abdomen.
A roar of intense pain followed, confirming the hit. Yukio followed through with a powerful reverse elbow strike to the creature's chest, shoving it back and widening the crucial distance once more. The long sword was momentarily impaled, a massive drain on the creature's vitality, but the mutant was still stubbornly standing, its strange organs refusing to yield to death.
Yukio pressed his advantage, his opponent momentarily stunned and pinned. It was time for the final, devastating sequence.
He accelerated, transforming his retreat into a full-body offensive, launching three successive flying kicks. The mutant, unable to dodge or parry due to the massive sword impaled in its gut, could only absorb the blows.
The first kick connected with the side of its head, snapping the creature's neck and sending it momentarily reeling off balance.
The second kick struck the point between its shoulder and chest, delivering a powerful blow that lifted the creature off its feet and sent it hurtling backward.
The third kick was the killing blow. It connected with the hilt of the sword still lodged in the mutant's abdomen, slamming the hilt violently forward. The momentum drove the silver blade deep into the creature's core and, with a loud, metallic CLANG, pinned the mutant to the plaster wall behind it.
The final, catastrophic blow elicited a scream of absolute, primordial agony—the sound of a creature facing inevitable, sudden death. Yukio fully expected the mutant to perish on the spot.
But the sheer, unyielding vitality of the R-variant was beyond comprehension.
The severely injured, impaled mutant refused to die. It began to hiss and twitch, its muscles contracting in a final, furious act of self-preservation. Utilizing its remaining limbs, it pushed with impossible force against the wall and the impaling blade, ripping its body free.
The gruesome struggle tore the lower abdomen wider, scattering a sickening trail of internal organs onto the floor, yet the creature did not stop. It dropped to all fours and, with a final, grotesque burst of speed, scrambled into the deep shadows of an adjacent maintenance crawl space and vanished.
Yukio stood over the pulsating, wet mess of scattered viscera, his body heaving. He yanked his long sword from the wall, its shining surface now coated in foul, alien fluids. He spat onto the ground—an act of profound disgust—and immediately turned to check on the Priest.
He found the Priest in a perilous state. The strange creature that had thrown him was now hunched over his neck. Its mouthparts were wide open, locked onto the Priest's jugular. Yukio, a vampire, could smell the concentrated blood, the scent of his own kind being consumed.
He approached slowly, the silver blade held low and ready. The feeding mutant, however, was highly alert. It heard the subtle shift of the samurai's feet and looked up, its eyes fixing on the menacing sight of Yukio and the bloodied silver blade.
The scent of the other mutant's fluids on the weapon was enough. Survival instinct trumped the feeding frenzy. With a snarl, the beast climbed the far wall on all fours like a frantic, agile ape and vanished into the ceiling's ventilation system. It recognized a truly dangerous enemy and chose immediate flight over continued combat.
Yukio knew better than to chase the unkillable beast into the shadows. He rushed to the Priest, who was still twitching, the wound on his neck wide and gaping.
"Priest is down! I repeat, the Priest is critically injured!" Yukio's voice, though controlled, carried a tremor of urgency over the communication line.
The signal was received by Light Axe, Villion, who had just delivered a shattering sledgehammer blow to the floor of the empty kitchen after his own mutant target had slipped away. The sound of the hammer impact was loud enough to be heard even over the faint, thrumming bass of the dance floor music.
"Damn it!" Villion roared, ripping his headset off and hurling it against the wall. He had been so focused on avenging his humiliation that the mutant—the same one that had shrugged off his hammer blow—had been able to use the distraction of the distant gunfire and radio chatter to escape the kitchen's confined space.
He looked at the shattered kitchen floor, then at the retreating shadow, and brought his heavy hammer down again in a loud, frustrated CRASH. He wasn't just losing the battle; he was losing the psychological war against these things, and the true gravity of their enemy was finally, catastrophically dawning on the purebloods.