Rip and Tear
03/12/0498AG
"I see you've met my dogs" Damien quipped mockingly at his target; petting the two massive cybernetic warhounds heads with his power armored hands. He ignored the blood misting the air from the whirring rock drills that made up their jaws as he stepped out from between them and approached the 'man' quivering in terror against the wall. "Perhaps you'd like to be a bit more cooperative than your friends" Damien continued; looking disdainfully at the chewed up meat that had been several people before Rip and Tear had gotten a hold of them.
The 'man' moaned in terror again as a trickle of urine made it's way down his legs...
"No" Damien asked in a quiet, measured voice. "Hmm... Very well. Rip, Tear" he continued, looking back at his faithful pets. "Kill!"
And they did... The sound of screaming, and flesh and bone being run through a meat grinder filled the room behind him as Damien turned and simply walked away. He had a few other leads he would have to track down. One of them was bound to be more cooperative.
A few days later found Damien and his hounds in the bowels of Halcon on Nyte; sloshing through dirty, shin high water in a filthy tunnel with the occasional flickering yellowed light panel offering the occasional bit of illumination... Not that Damien; or any other Nyteborne for that matter really needed the light. His hounds sloshed through the water a short distance ahead, special receptors built into their heads scanning the tunnel for any sign of their current prey. It was quiet aside from the sound of sloshing water, and the quiet whir of mechanical parts in motion... He didn't like the quiet. His mind had a tendency to wander into dark places when it was quiet. He shook his head violently; taking a trip down memory lane was not something he needed right now.
Head still moving to the side, he noticed it; a tiny, nearly invisible mark low on the wall by the entrance to a side tunnel. "Rip, Tear... Heel" he ordered; the cybernetic killing machines stopped dead at the command and looked back at him with cold blue glowing eyes. They seemed eager; or so Damien thought to himself as that was the impression they gave off. He moved to examine the mark, realizing that if he hadn't shaken his head at just the right moment, he would have missed it entirely. Looking at Rip and Tear he commented stonily "well, aren't you two useless?... And you're supposed to be programmed to hunt down targets too."
Both of the hounds whined; the sound sharing more with broken machinery being shredded rather than any natural animal sound. The noise echoed down the tunnel, and Damien turned to stare at them stonily through his skull faced helmet... They got the message though as the whining stopped immediately. Turning back to the mark, he knelt down in the water to get a closer look. On his HUD, the symbol was being quickly cross referenced with hundreds of others that had been found on Nyte since the disaster that was the Daemon invasion of several months previous, and when a match was found, he grinned murderously.
"Come" Damien said as he began to move down the side tunnel. It did not take long for his hounds to catch up, and barely a few minutes later, his helmet sensors picked up a heat signature ahead... A humanoid heat signature.
Shifting his combat shotgun to hang over his back, he drew one of his combat knives... The black material the weapon was made from glinted strangely in the dim light; the unnatural, painful to look at sigils etched into the blade seemed to draw what little light there was into the blade, and even through his power armored gauntlet, he felt a coldness radiating slowly up his fingers and hand before it began to work it way up his forearm. Ignoring the unpleasant sensation, he exploded forward with a burst of speed and a splash of dirty, tepid water and detritus. He was on the figure quickly; grabbing him by the throat as he opened his mouth to scream. Lifting the man into the air, he slammed him into the tunnel wall before pistoning the knife repeatedly into his chest and stomach. By the third thrust of the blade, the scent of burning flesh, and the slurp and sizzle of the blade going rhythmically in and out of the mans deteriorating torso filled the hallway as the mans body began to melt.
Dropping the bloody remains he moved on quickly, all pretense of stealth gone as he charged down the tunnel; Rip and Tear moving to either side and easily keeping pace. The sudden rise of the tunnel floor, and the equally sudden drop was unexpected, and Damien landed badly; sliding on something fluid, yet thick and vicious. He regained his footing quickly enough however...Rip and Tear doing the same and moving to stand protectively beside him as he took a moment to process what he'd fallen into.
"For fucks sake" he said to himself. "Not again."
The newly summoned daemon, and the dozen odd cultists looked equally put out Damien thought... Well the cultists did at least. The daemon just looked like a twelve foot tall reddish black rage monster covered in blades, claws, and curling horns.
"Rip, Tear... Kill" he commanded as he swung the shotgun from his back to his off hand. His finger squeezed the trigger, filling the ritual chamber with the barking roar of APHE Manstopper shells. The automatic shotgun bucked as he wielded it with his off hand. Compensating for the recoil, he strode forward toward the daemon as Rip and Tear lunged forward with matching mechanical growls, their bladed jaws growling to life with a throaty whirring noise that was just barely audible between the banging of the shotgun and the screaming of the surprised cultists.
The daemon didn't seem to care however. Instead, it charged gamely into the hail of HEAP Manstopper shells; seeming to ignore the chunks of flesh being blown from its hide. It was on him in a few seconds; swatting the shotgun from his hand and batting Damien back nearly twenty feet into a wall... The violence of the impact nearly knocked him out even inside his power armor. Ignoring how his HUD flickered, and a stream of error messages began to tick past the corner of his left eye, Damien drew his second combat knife; a matching twin to the one he used earlier, and had just enough time to brace himself before the daemon was on him once more.
The following brawl was hectic, and when asked to report on the incident later, he'd be hard pressed to come up with any details of the actual fight. There was pain though; and screaming, and blood; he remembered that much... Whether his or the daemons he would not be able to say, and the camera built into his helmet was an early casualty of the fight... Along with the helmet itself for that matter.
When it ended finally, it ended just as suddenly as it had begun, and Damien found himself slumped on top of a slowly corroding daemonic corpse in a pool of acidic blood with far too much vibrant crimson mixed in with it... His blood he thought sluggishly as he slid unsteadily off the corpse; dragging himself slowly away to lean back against a wall.
Rip and Tear approached him whining, practically bathed in the remains of the cultists; a fact Damien struggled to comprehend for some reason.
"Good dogs" he commented slowly. "I think I'll just rest here for a moment" he continued quietly as he slumped down against the wall. He did not hear them whine once more, nor did he notice as they cocked their heads to look at each other before turning to bound rapidly from the room.