Chapter Text
It was yet another starry night in the city. All of the citizens had done their nightly rituals, wished their loved ones goodnight, and were now sleeping safely and soundly in their beds. Sure, there were the bloodthirsty monsters that prowled the twilight hours looking for fresh victims to feast on, but this wasn’t anything to concern oneself with. After all, it was nothing that the magical girls couldn’t handle. Brave warriors of light, chosen by the founder of the city herself, who guarded the streets at night heroically and fearlessly striking down whatever hideous abominations lay in their path. With the careful watch of the founder and her saviors, all would be safe and there was nothing to fear.
At least, that was what all the propaganda implied. It did little to comfort either member of a young couple, both of whom were now desperately sprinting down the dark city streets. Giving swift chase were two oblong monsters, their levitating figures cloaked in darkness from the night. The woman of the couple, in spite of her heavy breathing and better judgment, craned her head behind her in an attempt to ascertain the status of the two creatures pursuing her, discovering to her horror that both monsters, one of whom was nearly the size of a small pickup truck, were rapidly gaining. Before she could turn to her boyfriend and urge him to run faster, she felt a tug on her shirt as the man pulled her into an alleyway.
This was a mistake. The couple ran down the garbage-strewn alleyway for a few seconds before realizing it was a dead end. They turned back to the entrance of the alley, hoping that they still had enough time to escape the death trap the man had dragged them into, but their hopes were dashed when they witnessed both creatures at the end of the alley blocking their escape. With nowhere left to run, the two simply watched in horror as the smaller monster, body still cloaked in shadow from the dark night, began to slowly advance down the alleyway towards them. Both began to back away, eyes fixed in terror upon the creature, until eventually they found they couldn’t back up any more. Realizing that their situation was well and truly hopeless, the woman closed her eyes and clung to the man, perhaps instinctually hoping for some measure of protection and comfort, although he had none to give. The man too closed his eyes and held his woman, not wanting to witness the sight of the advancing creature descending upon them in what would surely be their deaths.
Instead, they heard a voice befitting a happy and upbeat teenage boy ask them a question.
“Hey guys, do you know where the person I'm supposed to kill is?”
In surprise, the man and the woman opened their eyes to look upon the monster that had cornered them in the alleyway. There, stationary in the light of a small wall-lamp, they saw what appeared to be some kind of human-sized fish levitating in the air, with a large, sail-like dorsal fin similar to that of an arctic grayling. In its right pectoral fin it held a cross-shaped longsword, while in its left lay a medium sized round shield, each seemingly composed of the same shadowy purple material the monster itself was made of. On top of its head rested a similarly purple kettle hat, which looked like it should fall off at any moment and yet perpetually failed to do so. Two round, glowing yellow eyes were fixed upon them intensely, although behind them could almost be seen a trace of what could be described as playfulness. The couple now simply stood there, in a shared moment of stunned silence, their minds slowly beginning to register the fact that it was the monster that had spoken to them. And it was expecting an answer.
After nearly a minute, the man stumbled out a response, his mind still half gripped by fear and shock. “Wh-wh-what?”
“You see, there’s this girl, I think her name is, like, Anemone or something? Anyways, this weird purple ghost chick came out of a wall about two and a half hours ago and asked me and my buddy Steelhead over there to go kill her.” The fish monster clarified innocently. “Personally, I don’t know why we should just do what some random purple ghost girl tells us, but Steelhead says she’s like an “Emissary of the Great Nightmare” or something like that. We’ve been looking for people to ask about it all night, but the streets are all pretty empty. Then we found you gu-”
Before he could continue, the monster was interrupted by a thunderous, booming voice, similar in tone and pitch to a drill sergeant’s, coming from the entrance of the alley.
“SQUIRE! I HEAR A NOTABLE LACK OF SCREAMING AND AGONY COMING FROM DOWN THERE! YOU BETTER NOT BE SLACKING OFF AGAIN!”
“I’ll be right there, boss! Lemme finish up real quick!” Squire responded, before turning his attention back to the couple. “Anyways, so yeah, if you could just, like, tell us where she is, that would be great.”
The couple was still at a complete loss. Lacking any other option, and having no clue who anyone named Anemone was or where they were, both of them racked their brains for some kind of response that hopefully wouldn’t offend the strange monsters. Eventually, the man once more spoke up, his voice nervous and sheepish.
“Uhhhh… far away”
The woman now chimed in, her voice sheepish like her boyfriends. “Yeah yeah, far away from here. Definitely, very far. Can we please … just like … go now?” She said with a nervous smile on her face, both hands pointing with finger guns to the other end of the alley.
“Sweet, thanks guys! You’re the best!” Squire replied joyfully, not even registering the other half of the woman’s question. He swiftly turned around and swam back down the alley into the street to meet Steelhead, who was waiting for him in the streets near the alley impatiently.
Steelhead, like squire, was also purple and fish-shaped, although most of his form rather fittingly resembled a steelhead trout instead of an arctic grayling. There were, however, some very noticeable differences. In place of pectoral fins, the titanic monster had two massive, muscular arms, each ended by a five-digit hand with webbing between each finger. On top of his head rested a large military helmet, with the straps coming down to partially cover two intense, triangle shaped eyes locked in a near-permanent scowl. His body, in addition to glowing yellow spots, was covered in various scars and marks. He stared at Squire as he emerged from the alley with an already disappointed and angry look on his face, as if he already expected some kind of failure.
“Squire!” Steelhead barked impatiently. “Have you finished torturing the humans for information!?”
“Oh no, I didn’t torture them, I just asked nicely. And yes, I'll have you know, I did get the information.” Squire said proudly, a satisfied grin appearing on his face.
Steelhead sighed deeply before shouting once more at his underling. “Squire, we’ve been over this! HUMANS AREN’T PEOPLE! They’re scourges upon the land, holding back the glory of the Great Nightmare and all of Monsterkind! It is our sacred duty to harm them!”
Squire rolled his eyes, like he had heard this mantra many times before. “I know, I know, we’ve gotta destroy humanity for the glory of the Nightmare and all that, but can’t we just at least, like, be nice in the meantime? I mean, it’s not like they really pose a threat to anyone.”
“No! No being nice to humans!” Steelhead responded, before sighing once more. “We'll have to work on this whole “kindness” thing some more once we get back to the other side of the barrier. Anyways, what information did you gain!?”
“They said that she was far away”. Squire stated, eyes beaming and fins maneuvered to look like they were on his hips, if he had any.
“WHAT!? FAR AWAY!? WHAT KIND OF BULLSHIT INTEL IS THAT!?”
“Hey! I, for one, think it's perfectly good intel. We now know that she isn’t around here. That narrows down our search by, like, a lot.” Squire replied defensively, seeming somewhat offended at Steelhead’s outrage.
“No squire! That is not good intel! This nightmare-damn city is fucking huge! We’ll never find her like this!” Steelhead raged. He took a moment to calm down only slightly before addressing his underling one more. “Now, you are going to go back there, torture those humans properly, and get some actually good information!”
“Ok, ok, fine. I just have one question though. How would we even do that anyways? Whenever we even scratch a normal human, they always just go to sleep in, like, under 15 seconds.”
“Well, I dunno then, steal a regular-ass gun and shoot them a bunch of times in the leg, I’m sure that’ll work!”
“Uh, boss, I’m pretty sure there are only, like, 20 guns in this entire city, and they’re all 300 something year old museum pieces owned by, like, huge nerds.”
“WELL FUCK, FIND SOMETHING!” Steelhead barked, before beginning to frantically look around the area for anything he could make into a makeshift torture device. First, he looked at a tin garbage can perched near the entrance of the alley, shaking his head in frustration. “Puny!” he shouted, before giving it a right hook that sent it nearly 80 feet to the left. He then stopped at a small, quaint wooden bench that was sitting on the street. “Pathetic!” he shouted once more, before giving the bench a double vertical hammer strike that rendered the entire furnishing splinters. Finally, he stopped at a large, steel lamp post that was nearly 40 feet from the entrance of the alley. “Eureka! This’ll work!” he yelled triumphantly as he grasped the post with both hands and ripped it out of the ground, causing sparks to fly from the disconnected electrical wires. Putting it crossways in his mouth, he bit off the end of the post which held the lamp, instead replacing it with a jagged, hollow point, and tossed it to Squire. “There! Now go shank those damn humans!”
Squire dropped his sword and shield out of pure reflex before using his fins to narrowly catch the substantially oversized shank. He looked up at Steelhead, his eyes a mixture of confusion, annoyance, and resignation. “What if I get the information you want this time and I don’t need to stab them?”
“No matter what happens, you will stab them each at least 10 times! Now go! Go!”
Squire sighed, then slowly made his way back into the alley, struggling and shifting his weight to carry the mangled lamppost. As soon as he rounded the corner, he began to speak to his presumed victims.
“Ok, so i’m back guys, and apparently I need some more info, also my boss says I have to stab you a bunch of times as well, so, like, no hard feelings oka-”
Squire looked down the alley, but saw no sign of the couple that had been standing at the end. He swam down the alleyway and began to search the area frantically, turning over and looking into whatever dumpsters, garbage cans, or whatever large objects he could find. Soon, he ran out of large objects, and moved on to the medium sized ones, and then small ones that by no account should ever be able to hide a human. After nearly five minutes of this, Squire was nearly ready to give up his search. Then, as he swam towards the end of the alley to do one final sweep, he noticed a trash bag move out of the corner of his eye.
“Aha!” The fish monster said triumphantly to himself as he moved over to the pile. With one swift movement, he performed a full flip and used his tail to swat away the uppermost trash bag, revealing the couple that Squire and Steelhead had chased into the alley. Both of the humans recoiled, a slight scream escaping from the woman before the man’s hand swiftly clasped over mouth to stop it. Having found his quarry, Squire raised his lamppost spear and pointed it at the couple, beginning to speak as menacingly as his young teenage voice could muster.
“So, yeah, sorry guys, but I’m gonna need some more info, or else I’m gonna have to stab you with this, like, weird spear thingy.”
“W-we don’t know anything! We swear!” The woman responded with terror in her voice.
“Uhh…” Squire thought about what Steelhead would do. “That’s what someone who knows something would say!” He barked as he raised his makeshift spear and pointed it at the woman’s heart. “Now tell me or.. or else!”
“Please!” The woman cried as she buried her face into her boyfriend, who was still trying his absolute best to keep up his thin facade of a protector despite his own fearful eyes and quivering body. Squire raised his spear even further and tried to put on an aggressive face, attempting to be even more intimidating, but the only thing this display managed to get from the humans was horrified silence and the faint sound of sobbing coming from the woman.
“Wait… do you… really not know anything?” Squire said quizzically, to which both members of the couple simply nodded nervously.
Squire lowered his spear and head for a moment, as if thinking about something. Then, After nearly 30 seconds of motionless contemplation, Squire sighed heavily and dropped his makeshift spear to the ground with a loud clang. He spun back around to the trash bags that he had previously knocked off of the couple and placed them back over their hiding spot, much to the surprise of the humans still staying there. Making sure that the hastily-made shelter was secure and that no bits of human could be seen, Squire took a moment to reassure himself before swimming back out of the alley to Steelhead.
“I see you’re finally back!” Steelhead barked. “What did you find!?”
“Uh, boss? They’re gone.” Squire said somewhat nervously.
“WHAT DO YOU FUCKING MEAN THEY’RE GONE!?” Steelhead yelled unusually loudly, his voice full of surprise and rage. “They were just there!”
“Yeah, they just, like, vanished. They’re not there anymore. I have no clue where they went.”
“Let me see!”
Steelhead charged down the alley and began madly looking for the humans. At first he simply darted around, looking at the various nooks and crannies in which it seemed something could hide. After about a minute of this, he began to punch random objects, both as a way of clearing them aside and as simply yet another way of acting like he was angry. At one point, Squire fretted as one of Steelhead’s punches hit no less than five feet away from where the humans were hiding, eliciting a gasp from them that likely would have given away their position were it not for the incredibly loud noise of Steelhead’s rampage. After nearly three more minutes of absolutely thrashing the alley, Steelhead finally threw his last punch and slowly turned back to Squire.
“Well… shit, they really are gone!” Steelhead growled as he shook his head in frustration. “You see Squire, this is why we need to kill the humans! You leave them alone for two minutes, and they start pulling off voodoo magic bullshit like this!”
“Well… maybe they just found a way to climb over the alley or hide? That seems a bit more plausible.” Squire offered.
“That’s ridiculous Squire! We both know humans aren’t smart enough for that!” Steelhead
Shook his head once more. “Well shit, now what are we gonna do? The only humans we’ve found all night just got away, and we’ve only got one more bloody hour!”
“Hmm…” Squire thought. “I’m pretty sure this chick is supposed to be, like, important, right?”
“Of course! Why else would we be tasked with chasing someone down by an emissary of the Great Nightmare itself!?”
“Well, I was just thinking that maybe we should go check that giant mansion over there then.” Squire said, pointing to the top of the aforementioned white-marble mansion as it was visible over the tops of the buildings in the distance.
“Well, it isn’t like we have shit else to do! Let’s go, move out!” Steelhead barked before swimming away as fast as he could, not even looking to see if squire was behind him. Squire took a moment to pick up his sword and shield off the ground at the base of the alleyway and began to swim as well, rushing as fast as he could to catch up to Steelhead as he careened towards their next target.