Won't you Dance with The Devil? [Percy/Mythica/Leon]

"I mean, the report said a cursed, overgrown, and aggressive wolf, so I wasn't thinking it'd be-- ACK!-- something like this!" Percy retorted, sporting his own suit of armor, though it was a bit less technical than Leon's. The one he'd wanted to wear had a malfunction just as he was making his last tests before they left, so he was using a lighter version that would still allow him to use his own bodily strength, but would aid him with aim assist in the helmet and provide ample shielding for his body. He had a sword strapped to his back, but at the moment was favoring his sub-machine gun. Not that it was doing a ton of good. The bullets seemed to rip right through the black ooze and rot with nothing but deafening demon squeals to show for it.

The reports from nearby River Village and visitors to the Silent Cemetery had certainly been a little misleading, but he didn't blame the visitors. This thing was fast, too fast to get a good look at if you were far away, and if you were close enough to get a good look, you didn't live to tell anyone. It'd popped up on Meliora Vitae for exactly that reason, that and the curse that was infecting everything. The beast was eating people just trying to visit the graves of their loved ones, and this wasn't even considering the effect it was having on the ecosystem. It had driven most of the animals from the area mad enought that they turned on each other until wiped out. It also seemed to have a problem with trees, since it had felled so many to give itself a wide berth. It was only a matter of time before it started moving closer to town to feed on the farm animals and just generally curse everything. The scientist part of him wanted to see how humans would react to such an effect, but no. It'd likely either be a quick decent into rage and madness or immediate death like the aquatic life. This was definitely a mission for his guild, though tranquilizing and transporting a mutant wolf had been what he thought he was getting himself and Leon into. This was...something that needed to die. It was a monster fit for nowhere but Sin. And as much as he liked to hype himself and his abilities up to mage-like standards, he couldn't help but think there were far better suited people in the guild for this other than two magicless men.

"Nature in Fiore is weird, alright?!" he called, circling around to the rear of the monster since Leon was doing such a great job keeping its attention held forward. "Don't get too cocky, though!" he reminded him in an urgent voice. Hypocritical is what those words for. He had little issue pointing out things like that for the sake of others, but best believe he got too full of himself often and wound up hurt. People around him were the trees, and he was the forest.

As if to highlight his unheeded warning, he heard the creature's skull face smack into Leon's armor and saw little more than a dark streak, lots of flying tombstones, and dust. "LEON!" he cried, though he had a little more faith in his inventions than to think his friend was dead. That was a hard hit, but he was likely feeling it. It wouldn't matter what condition Leon was in if Percy couldn't keep this Wendigo from chasing after him to really put the tech suit to the test.

Abandoning the useless gun, Precy drew his sword and went for the legs while he could. Those seemed much more solid than the torso, and the beast was too tall to see if slicing off the skull would do any good. With a powerful and skilled sweeping motion, the sword hacked into the calf portion of the hindquarter, expecting a clean slice considering his blade had a laser-enhanced edge, but it caught like a dull kitchen knife in a thick pork chop. Or so he imagined since he didn't cook. The monster squealed in pain or annoyance, still advancing like nothing happened, and dragging Percy along by the hilt. Wrenching it free, he poured on the speed and slid under the front legs, lopping them clean off at the elbow joins. The cursed beast pitched forward and smashed its head into the ground, but still, like a demon hellbent on claiming the soul of the marked, its back legs pushed it through the dirt toward Leon.

Rounding back to the rear, Percy knew he wasn't strong enough to cleave this mythical monster's back legs off without some help. Pulling what looked like a short-snouted gun with a hose from his waist, he pushed it against his leg and pulled the trigger, injecting himself with a cocktail of vitamins and stimulants. His veins and muscles pulsed, pushing past their normal human limits and lending him increased speed and strength. His next swing, partnered with a mighty roar of effort, lopped the back appendage clean off, which he repeated on the last leg. Incapacitated, all that was left was to figure out exactly how to kill it.

Climbing up on top of the legless beast, Percy scanned for any weak points. A heart? A core? Some sort of critical energy point? He stabbed a few places with his blade but was only met with ear-splitting screaming and vigorous wiggling. "How do you kill it?!" he asked irritably kicking at its spine hard enough to hear bones splintering.

That seemed to hit a nerve, literally, since the Wendigo bucked its body and sent Percy toppling off. Once on the ground, like a demonic centipede, a demtipede, it undulated its torso until it could rear back and crack its hellish deer skull and horns right into the chest piece of Percy's suit. "Ugh!" he groaned, feeling his back press into the soil deeper and deeper as the thing squealing over him pushed. Clawing at the skull for a handle every time it bashed into his chest, he finally found one just as he heard and felt a disheartening crack. His armor broke. Just how strong was this thing to crack gulantium? Using his serum strength, he grabbed the horns and held the head up off his body, as well as in place, though it was taking all of his super-enhanced steroid strength to do so.

"Leon!" he wheezed, hoping he'd be heard. His chest piece had cracked and caved inward, pressing painfully against his sternum to the point where not much air could make it back in his lungs. He needed to get the breastplate off, but to do so, he'd have to let go of the enemy. "Finish...finish it!" he pleaded, already seeing the darkness edging his vision. If he didn't get a breath in the next minute or so...

[wc: 1160 || total: 2005]

It felt like an eternity before he felt his body shifting around. At first, he felt panic edge his foggy thoughts, thinking the creature was still alive and crushing him, but he couldn't do anything about it. Unconsciousness tried to tug him under, which he thought would be an improvement over the burning in his lungs. However, as Leon pried his destroyed chest plate off and urgently tapped his helmet, said helmet retracted and showed a very flushed face suddenly gasping for air and coughing. It was a few moments before Percy could hold himself up without the hand on his shoulder, and a moment or two more before he could answer Leon. He held up a weak thumbs up and pulled an even weaker smile.

Once the dizziness subsided, his strength was returned to him and he could start to get up. "Don't worry about it, Leon. You did plenty, including saving my skin," he said as he put a reassuring and grateful hand on the man's upper arm, though his face was troubled. It was the look of an inventor whose creation had failed at the most critical of times-- frustration and embarrassment. He was glad it was his chest plate and not Leon's though. Putting his own life in danger due to faulty equipment was one thing, but putting someone else in danger was a fear that always plucked at the edge of his mind. It was why Leon could only use extensively tested suits, while Percy took out the newer stuff. He'd prefer not to work out the kinks in the middle of fighting a hellspawn, though.

Speaking of hellspawn, the chopped and blown up carcass started hissing all of the sudden. Whirling, Percy gave it a sharp look and reached for his gun, but it wasn't a second wind. It was...dissolving? Maybe evaporating was more of the right term. Either way, the smell was atrocious and brought on a new bout of coughing for the unknowingly magic-intolerant man. Suddenly he felt pretty terrible with a pounding headache and stomach ache to match, but he'd deal with that later. More interestingly, as the demonic goop slowly disappeared, a person was left in its wake. A human. A young man with sandy brown hair and shabby clothes sat up in the exact place the Wendigo had been, looking bewildered.

"What the.." Percy muttered, suddenly taking off to kneel by the man. "Are you alright?" he asked, and the man turned and vaguely nodded. He seemed so confused and terrified. At least they could all agree that this was a surprising turn of events. "Were you...that creature?" Percy asked next, to which the man burst to life and grabbed his arm.

"Yes, yes! I was! One minute I was going about my business on my way here, and the next I was nothing more than a monster!" he exclaimed, tears starting to stream from his eyes. "I had no control. I...thank you got saving me!" he said to both Leon and Percy. "You released me!"

"What happened? Did your magic get away from you?" the scientist wanted to know, his brain already a flurry of questions. Did the man do it to himself, or did it happen independently? Not that Percy wanted to be a mindless demonic hell beast, but if there was something he could learn from this concerning getting his own magic...

"No, no, this just happened to me. I think someone did it, but I don't remember who..." he answered, holding his pounding head as he tried to remember.

Percy patting his shoulder to quiet him. "Do you remember which way you came from?"

"I live in Clover Town, so I was coming from that way..."

"Alright, thank you so much. Please, just relax, now," Percy smiled reassuringly.

Standing, Percy turned to Leon with his investigative gleam bright in his eyes. "Let's get this guy somewhere safe. I think we need to backtrack his way here," he told Leon, excited as if he hadn't just almost suffocated to death. "If there's someone out there turning people into monsters, we should check that out so this doesn't happen again," Percy decided, though the rest of his thoughts were left unsaid. 'And so I can see if whoever this is can help me with my little issue...'

[wc: 720 || total: 3457]

As Leon would learn if he hadn't already, Percy was thoughtless when it came to his own well-being. It was somewhere between the hubris of a young adult not even considering that he could very realistically die from situations even less threatening than the ones he often found himself in and the fact that he was just a reckless guy when it came to himself. He'd make provisions and overthink all day long for someone else's sake, but be hypocritically baffled if someone else did the same for him or expected him to do so for himself. The extent of his consideration for Leon's idea was him picking up the caved-in chest piece and giving it a once over. "No, I can fix this on the way. I just need a large rock to hammer it back out until the clasps latch correctly," he said, meeting Leon's gaze with determination and his own fierceness. The injection he'd given himself had yet to run down. His adrenaline was pumping. The veins in his arms and neck were standing out more than usual, pulsing with each beat of his heart. Perhaps when the effects wore off he'd feel the soreness in his chest from the bruise forming on his sternum, but for now, all he could think of was finding who or what did this. He'd fought some pretty nasty things with no armor at all, so surely whatever they found wouldn't be that big of a deal. "Anyway, it won't hurt to look since we're going that way anyway to even get back to town."

And fix it on the way, he did. After whacking it a few times on a couple large rocks and flat out using his juice's strength to manually bend it back into basically the right shape, it was once more convex, though it was certainly ugly and dented. He strapped it back on, though for now, he left his helmet off. He could see and breathe just fine with it on, but he preferred the wind in his face if he could help it. Walking around in full gear always irritated him, for some reason. Besides, despite the general quiet creepiness the Cursed Lands offered, the weather was pretty nice today. The random, shaky dude followed along with them as they were led by the road toward Clover Town.

"It'd be nice if this potential person stuck around," Percy muttered, surveying intently into the trees for anything unusual. Maybe this person, if it was a person, lived somewhere along the way? It just seemed so random to have happened between a town and a cemetery. Someone grieving a loss and lashing out? A ghost?? Percy paled at the mere thought of that. He didn't do well with spirits and ghosts and scary things. He had to pull his line of thought out of that right away! There was no way he could possibly hypothesize what would lead a person to do what had been done to this random townie. He couldn't help but calculate the odds of finding this random person who had done such a random act as nearly zero. Leon might get his overnight stay in town after all.

[wc: 535 || total: 4338]