The lobby of "The Rusty Anchor" inn, located in the outskirts of the Saint Veren Gate district, was usually quiet at this hour. Magitech gas lamps hummed low, casting a sickly green glow across the worn wooden floor. Behind the reception desk, a young demoness with pale pink skin was busy polishing her nails, occasionally adjusting her reading glasses that kept sliding down her nose. The atmosphere was peaceful, boring, and mundane.
Until the front door opened.
Not with a kick or an explosion, but with a polite, gentle push. The small bell above the door chimed cheerfully—ting-a-ling—a sound that stood in stark contrast to the figure stepping inside.
He towered over everything, nearly two meters tall, a looming spire of a figure clad in a white laboratory coat now dulled by road dust. His skin was a roadmap of surgical madness; emerald green reptile scales covered his left arm, rough shark-like skin coated his neck, and his face was stitched together with coarse black thread, uniting mismatched patches of flesh. His right eye, a feline yellow, blinked out of sync with his human brown left eye.
Reven smiled. A smile that was too wide, revealing far too many teeth.
The demon receptionist looked up, a practiced professional smile beginning to form on her lips. "Welcome to The Rusty Anchor, is there anything I ca—"
She never finished her sentence.
With a movement so fluid and fast that the naked eye could barely track it, Reven drew a massive woodcutter's axe that he had somehow concealed behind his back. It was not a magical weapon. It was simply a heavy slab of steel sharpened to a razor's edge, an honest tool for dirty work.
THWACK!
The sound was wet and heavy, like hitting a ripe watermelon with a sledgehammer. The axe blade struck precisely in the center of the receptionist's forehead, splitting her skull down to the bridge of her nose.
The world froze for a single second. The receptionist's eyes widened, her reading glasses cracked, and the expression of "how may I help you" still lingered on the halved remains of her face.
Then, gravity took over. Her body collapsed forward onto the desk, spraying dark red blood all over the guest book and the plastic flower vase.
"Aaa... AAAAAAAA!"
A goblin maid sweeping in the corner dropped her broom and screamed. The sound triggered a chain reaction. Several guests sitting in the lobby—a pair of young vampires and a fish merchant—shouted in panic, chairs screeching as they jumped to their feet.
"Whoops," Reven chuckled, dislodging his axe with a sharp yank accompanied by the sound of crunching bone. He licked a drop of blood that had splashed onto his cheek. "Service is a bit slow here. I got impatient."
"POLICE! CALL THE EBONY GUARD!" one of the guests screamed.
"Ah, bureaucracy," Reven sighed. He dropped his blood-soaked axe to the floor with a heavy clang. His right hand, encased in a black leather glove, reached into his lab coat and produced a massive Revolver. The weapon was a work of art; a long barrel, an ivory grip, and a cylinder engraved with golden bone motifs. No magic. Just gunpowder, lead, and precision mechanics.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Three shots. Three bodies fell.
The goblin maid was thrown backward, a gaping hole in her chest. The fish merchant collapsed, his head exploding like a water balloon. The young vampire tried to run, but the heavy-caliber bullet shattered his spine, leaving him sprawled helpless on the floor.
Reven blew the smoke from the barrel of his gun. "Science doesn't wait for the police, darling."
He began walking toward the guest room hallway, his footsteps echoing on the wooden floor—clack, clack, clack. He hummed softly, a cheerful melody that sounded horrific amidst the smell of gunpowder and blood.
In the hallway, chaos began to spread. Doors opened; curious and terrified heads poked out.
Reven raised his revolver without turning his head. BANG! An old man peeking out collapsed instantly, his brains decorating the wall behind him.
A small child, perhaps of the Beastkin race, ran out of a room, crying for his parents. He stumbled in front of Reven, falling flat on his face. Reven didn't even slow down. He didn't step over him.
CRACK.
His high-heeled boot landed right in the center of that small back, crushing the spine with ruthless efficiency. The child stopped crying instantly, his breath ceasing forever. Reven kept walking as if he had just stepped on a cockroach.
He stopped in front of room number 104. He could hear gasps and the creaking of a bed from inside.
"Ah, biology in action," he muttered.
He kicked the door until the hinges snapped. Inside, a pair of lovers—a human woman and a gargoyle man—were wrestling under the covers, frozen in their intimate position, eyes wide as they stared at the nightmare figure standing in the doorway.
"Sorry to interrupt your copulation," Reven said in a flat tone. He raised the axe he had picked back up. "But I need data on trauma response in subjects currently in a state of high arousal."
He walked in. The door partially closed. The screams that followed lasted only five seconds, before being replaced by the thud-thud-thud of wet chopping against flesh and bone.
On the second floor, in room number 207, the atmosphere was vastly different.
"Nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight..."
Stormclaw's voice was heavy, steady, and full of discipline. He was on the floor, his white-furred, muscular body rising and falling in perfect rhythm. Sweat soaked his fur, dripping onto the wooden floor. He wore only shorts, showing off a physique like a Greek hero carved from marble and fur.
"Nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine..."
On the sofa across the room, Lily Kageyama lay upside down, her legs dangling over the headrest, her long black hair sweeping the floor. She toyed with her dagger, tossing it into the air and catching it again.
"Ten thousand," Stormclaw finished his count. He rose in one fluid motion, grabbing a towel and wiping his face. His breathing was regular. "Training complete."
"You're boring, Cat," Lily complained, rolling her bright blue eyes. "Why is Master taking so long? I'm bored. I want to kill something. Or at least eat something good. The bread here tastes like sawdust."
Stormclaw walked to the kitchenette, pouring a glass of water. "Master has business. We were told to wait. Discipline, Kageyama."
"Discipline is for people with no imagination," Lily grumbled.
Suddenly, Stormclaw's ears twitched. The glass of water in his hand stopped halfway to his lips.
"Did you hear that?" he asked, his voice dropping to a growl.
"Hear what?" Lily was still tossing her dagger. "The sound of my starving stomach?"
"Gunshots," Stormclaw said. "Downstairs. And screams. The smell of blood... it's starting to waft up here."
Lily sat up straight instantly, a wide, dangerous smile blooming on her pretty face. "Oh? A party? Without us?"
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.
The knocking on their door was polite, rhythmic, and utterly terrifying given the context.
Stormclaw tensed, muscles contracting, ready for combat. "Don't open it," he whispered.
But Lily had already jumped off the sofa. "Don't be silly! Maybe it's room service bringing fresh corpses!"
She walked to the door with a cheerful stride and threw it wide open. "Hello! Did you bring fo—"
Her words cut off.
Standing in the doorway was Reven. His white lab coat was now covered in artistic, abstract splashes of red. In his right hand, he gripped the neck of a maid whose body had gone limp, tongue lolling out, eyes bulging vacantly. Reven held the corpse as if it were an unwanted handbag.
Lily's eyes narrowed. Her hand moved slowly toward the hilt of the katana at her waist. "Who are you?"
Reven smiled. His mismatched eyes blinked. "Oh, hello, Sweetheart. We meet again. Remember me? Drinking buddy on the train?"
He lifted the maid's corpse slightly. "Sorry about the mess downstairs. I was just tidying up the... mm... yes... shiny ones, eh? They're so fragile."
"You..." Lily was just about to draw her sword.
But Reven was faster. Far faster than should be possible for a 'scientist'.
He dropped the maid's corpse and, in the same motion, his right hand—now revealed to be wearing a softly humming robotic exoskeleton glove—shot forward.
GGRKK!
The iron hand crushed around Lily's throat before the girl could even blink. Reven lifted her off the floor with ease, Lily's legs kicking futilely at the air.
"Ack... let... go..." Lily clawed at the robotic hand, but it was like scratching solid steel.
Stormclaw, watching the scene from the kitchen, felt his world slow down. He recognized that figure. He recognized the stitches on that face. He recognized those yellow and brown eyes.
It was him.
The man who had dissected him. The man who had turned him from a stray cat into a monster. The man who gave him nightmares every night.
"REVENNNNNNNNN!!!"
Stormclaw's roar shook the walls of the room. He exploded in a flash of white electricity, shooting from the kitchen toward the door.
But he was one second too late.
Reven looked into Lily's panicked eyes. "Sleep tight, porcelain doll."
He squeezed.
CRACK.
The sound of Lily's neck snapping sounded like a dry twig being stepped on. The girl's head lolled to the side at an unnatural angle, her bright blue eyes losing their light, becoming empty and dead.
Reven let go, and Lily's body fell to the floor like a ragdoll with its strings cut.
"Oh, hi Little Cat," Reven greeted cheerfully, turning toward the ball of lightning hurtling toward him. "I came to pick you up. My lab feels lonely without you."
"YOU WILL DIE!!!"
Stormclaw was already upon him. His right fist, wrapped in thousands of volts of pure electricity, slammed toward Reven's face at supersonic speed.
Reven didn't dodge. He leaned forward slightly, activating the hydraulic boosters in his robotic right glove, and punched back.
BOOOOOM!
Fist of flesh and lightning met fist of steel and hydraulics. The shockwave blew out the doorframe, shattered the hallway walls, and sent wooden splinters flying in all directions. The floor beneath them cracked.
Reven was pushed back several meters, his boots leaving trenches in the wooden floor, but he laughed. "Excellent data! Your energy output has increased by 40% since we last met!"
Stormclaw didn't care about data. He attacked again, a flurry of rapid punches that looked like flashes of light. BAM! BAM! BAM!
Reven parried most with his robotic arm, but one punch slipped through, slamming into his ribs. A cracking sound echoed, but Reven only grinned. He pressed a button on his palm.
"Sit!"
Hidden mechanical legs shot out from the heels of his boots, anchoring into the floor for stability. His right leg snapped forward, the titanium-reinforced toe of his boot smashing into Stormclaw's stomach.
THUD!
Stormclaw coughed blood, flung backward, crashing through the living room wall and into the adjacent room.
Reven gave him no time. The left shoulder of his lab coat opened, revealing a small device embedded in the flesh of his shoulder. A mini plasma cannon.
ZING! ZING! ZING!
Three balls of searing green plasma shrieked through the air, chasing Stormclaw.
Stormclaw rolled; the plasma struck where he had been lying a fraction of a second before, melting the floor and bed until it burned through to the level below. He rose, fur scorched in places, but his tough hide withstood the heat.
"You think your toys can hurt me again?!" Stormclaw roared. He clapped his hands together. CLAP! An electric shockwave spread out, killing the magitech lights on the entire floor.
In the darkness, Stormclaw's eyes glowed a savage yellow. He lunged.
Reven clicked his tongue. "Tch. Close-quarters combat with a Brute type in a confined space. Inefficient."
He turned and jumped—not toward Stormclaw, but toward the window. He crashed through the glass, shattering it into pieces, and fell into the night air.
Stormclaw ran to the window, watching Reven land smoothly on the roof of the building across the street using a grappling hook cable fired from his wrist.
"YOU CAN'T RUN!" Stormclaw prepared to jump.
Reven, standing on the edge of the opposite roof, smoothed out his torn lab coat. He pulled out a small remote with a single red button.
"Who says I'm running? I'm just moving to a bigger stage."
He pressed the button.
CLICK.
The entire "Rusty Anchor" inn exploded.
It wasn't a normal fire explosion. It was a chemical bomb Reven had planted in the lobby when he entered. Green and purple flames erupted from the ground floor, tearing through the building's structure, devouring old wood and the flesh of its inhabitants in the blink of an eye.
KABOOOOOOOOOM!
The building collapsed in on itself in a cloud of dust, fire, and debris.
Reven smiled, feeling the tremor in the building he stood upon. "Subject 09, status: high probability of termination. A pity. I really wanted to harvest his kidneys."
Suddenly, the burning debris across the street exploded outward.
From within the inferno, a white comet shot into the air. Stormclaw. He was burning, his fur charred, blood flowing from dozens of wounds, but he was alive. And he was angrier than ever.
He landed on the wall of the building where Reven stood, claws digging deep into the bricks, and began to run vertically upwards with gravity-defying speed.
"REVENNNNNNN!"
"Oh, he's persistent," Reven said, his tone bored yet impressed. He pulled two small metal spheres from his pocket and tossed them down.
The spheres burst into nets of razor-sharp monofilament wire.
Stormclaw didn't dodge. He channeled electricity through his entire body, turning himself into a living blade of lightning. He punched through the wire net, his body sliced here and there, but his momentum remained unchecked.
He reached the roof. He lunged at Reven.
The fight moved to the rooftops of the Saint Veren Gate district. It was a brutal game of cat and mouse, where the mouse was a heavily armed mad scientist and the cat was a raging god of lightning.
They leaped from building to building. Every time Stormclaw landed, roofs cracked. Every time Reven landed, he left traps behind—freezing mines, nerve gas grenades, poisoned spikes.
Stormclaw smashed a chimney and hurled the bricks like cannonballs. Reven fired back with tracer rounds from his revolver, every shot aiming for knee joints or eyes.
"Why won't you just die?!" Stormclaw screamed, managing to close the distance and land a punch that grazed Reven's shoulder, tearing the stitched flesh to reveal metal plating beneath the skin.
Reven stumbled, but he laughed, a manic cackle echoing in the night. "Because death is boring! And I have too much work to do!"
He leaped backward, activating his rocket boots to hover momentarily in the air, then fired a sticky web made of synthetic polymer at Stormclaw, pinning the cat's left hand to the wall of a clock tower.
While Stormclaw roared and tried to tear the web, Reven landed on a stone gargoyle opposite him. He was panting. His robotic arm was smoking. His lab coat was in tatters. His stitched face was beginning to split in places, revealing raw red meat underneath.
Below them, the sirens of the Ebony Guard began to wail. The city was awake. This chaos was attracting too much attention.
Reven looked down, then at Stormclaw, who had just managed to rip the web with his teeth, lips bleeding, eyes promising a slow and painful murder.
"Well, this has been fun," Reven said, injecting a stimulant into his own neck with a syringe that popped out of his collar. "But I'm out of high-explosive ammo, and you are starting to become very, very annoying."
Stormclaw crouched to jump, electricity crackling around him, preparing for a final suicide attack.
"Next time, Little Cat," Reven said.
He dropped a smoke bomb—not normal smoke, but a thick, hallucinogenic purple fog.
Stormclaw lunged through the smoke, his fist smashing the gargoyle where Reven had stood, pulverizing the stone into dust.
But Reven was gone.
Stormclaw stood there, atop the clock tower, chest heaving violently, electricity snapping across his charred fur. He scanned the entire city with his predator eyes. No trace. Only a faint, manic laugh carried on the night wind, drifting further and further away.
He had failed. Lily was dead. Reven had escaped.
"GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"
Stormclaw's roar shattered the night sky of Nocturnus, a scream of frustration and grief that made the vampires in the streets below shudder in fear. He fell to his knees, punching the clock tower roof until it cracked, tears of rage evaporating as they touched his electrified cheeks.
He was alone above a strange city, covered in the blood of his new friend and his old enemy, while the rain began to fall again, trying to wash away the indelible sins of the night.