WAR WIIGF 28 (Patreon)

"I was fourteen when they shipped me from Dublin to Rome.”The brownstone was a three-story coffin left to rot in a neighborhood that was already half a graveyard yet Keane walked through it like he owned the deed, a black-clad ghost in a house full of monsters. He moved, and Ken just… followed a couple steps behind, sneakers creaking on filth-strewn floorboards, air thick with the smell of dust, decay, and old blood. 

Keane didn’t even break stride as a blur of motion, a shape of pale flesh, launched itself from the end of the hallway. He moved in a tight, brutal spiral, his body a blur of black cloth and golden light, faster than any human Ken had ever seen other than him and Luigi. The Squire came down, claws extended, and Keane met another with a fist wreathed in that same golden light. "Inveniat Dominum." The impact was a wet whump, a bag of wet cement hitting a brick wall as the vampire’s chest caved in, body staying together long enough for its eyes to widen.

That was all the leech had time for, a cloud of gray ash replacing it before its back even touched the ground.

Ken barely looked down as they walked past it. What’s that? Five already?

For all the priest looked like he was born for the inside of a library and had never left it, the man was undoubtedly a leech-killing machine and he knew it.

"Not to seminary, of course.” Deathblow after deathblow rained down on the vampires weakened by what Keane had called a Sanctification, and through it all, Keane didn’t stop with his sermon. For some reason, the man was intent on telling Ken his life story in the middle of a goddamn slaughterhouse. “To a nameless stone compound buried within the depts of the Vatican’s ancient cellars.”

The priest’s gaze swept the darkened upper landing, tone as casual as if he were discussing the weather. Both his glowing fists provided illumination the condemned house couldn’t give, letting Ken make out even more of the violence past what his Sharingan could compensate for. “The first week, they took my name and locked my clothes away. Three years of training, every day written like scripture on the body."

“Die, papist!” Another one, a Fledgling this time, tore their way from a room left open, a length of rusted pipe held like a club. Keane’s movement was so fluid it was almost sickening, the vampire not even having a ghost of a chance as the priest sidestepped the wild swing.

A hand blurred out, golden fingers clamped tight onto the vampire’s wrist. 

Red eyes went wide, a pained hiss leaving a sharp-toothed mouth an instant before Keane twisted.

That hiss turned into a scream so loud Ken nearly missed the ugly snap of bone as its pipe clattered to the floor. Keane didn’t let go even as the bloodsucker thrashed in pain, just using the thing’s own momentum to spin and slam it face-first into the wall.

Plaster gave way under the impact, the vampire’s pain almost silenced even as cracks spread up to the ceiling. But Keane was far from finished. His other fist, still lit up a bright gold, slammed into the back of its skull. “Inveniat Dominum.” 

Another wet whump became another cloud of ash.

"Mornings began with silence and weight.” As if he hadn’t made an inhuman blood-drinker look like a joke, Keane kept walking and talking, voice completely even. "Five hours of drills for the strength of your physical form. Carrying stones upon your back till your bones demanded simple rest, then bare-knuckle grappling on cold floors. The instructors used a saying: the sacrament begins when the joints fail.” Keane’s knuckles met each other as they cracked loud enough to echo, the sound nearly a gunshot in the quiet. “Meaning torn muscles and creaking bones was the bare minimum they would expect on a good day. By seventeen, I could crush a cinderblock between my palms. Human bone isn’t harder than that. Yet neven now, I'm still no stronger than a Squire. All this…." 

His hands came apart to gesture to the ash that littered the floor and walls and ceiling. “I can only thank the Lord for as His Sacraments allow me to serve as I do.”

…oh, you’re only as strong as a Squire. The boy who wasn’t even fully as strong as a Neonate pushing his hardest could only nod slowly. That’s not cool at all.

As if he summoned them, two more bloodsuckers — clearly Neonates, at least by the look of their eyes — young and stupid and fast, rushed the priest from both sides. 

Left and right hissed toward him at fool speed, across opposite ends of a hallway. 

Keane didn't even seem to notice the one to his right as he juked left to meet the first, movements a brutal ballet. One glowing forearm parried a clawed strike, the impact sending sparks into the air as he drove his other fist into the vampire’s gut. 

The Neonate folded, and Keane brought his knee up.

A sharp crack of an impact sounded out loud as the thing went stumbling back, its jaw hanging at an angle that turned its scream into a choked groan. Keane was already turning, his back foot pivoting, as the second one reached him. He caught its lunge on his shoulder, his body absorbing the impact. The second vampire could only stare in confusion before a glowing fist slammed down on its head like a hammer, crushing its skullcap at the same moment Kenny’s silver knife plunged into the heart of the broken first one.

Ash. “Inveniat Dominum.” 

And more ash.

"Afternoons were blade work.” 

Red eyes took in the next room, a ruined dining hall in front of them with a massive table taking up half the length of the room. 

Even missing all its chairs, and half-rotting apart and eaten by bugs, Ken didn’t doubt this was probably where a long-dead family probably once had Christmas dinner. 

"We learned to throw three at once, drawing patterns in the air faster than a heartbeat. Our palms and fingers bled before practice met its end. A reasonable standard, of course. In the field, you get barely a breath before a Dead Apostle crosses the floor. A champion sprinter could cover the span of ten meters in that time. We had to be faster than that.” Keane’s sigh was silent in the dead air. “Eventually, we were."

Ken just followed, a silent ghost in the priest’s wake as the single tomoe in each eye spun frantically, trying to record the brutal grace of the priest’s movements as he killed screaming vampire after screaming vampire. 

At a certain point, though, you really couldn’t call this fighting. 

The man was just… erasing. 

One fist clenched tight at Ken’s side, the other still gripping tight to the knife he had hidden in his hoodie. I want that.

He wanted it all. Every punch, every kick, every single step even; all of it in his brain to make his own and to use for his own hunting and skills.

“Jesus, man… How do you even get like this?” Ken muttered the words to a room filled with nothing but ash and broken furniture as his spinning red eyes took in every single one of Keane’s movements — each and every one of them done without chakra or magic. It’s like if Batman was an exorcist.

He’d suspected from the beginning that Keane had secrets, that the man had skills but.. Not this. Ken shook his head as he watched the priest break a newborn’s neck before a broken chair leg turned the body to simple ash in under a second. Nothing like this at all.

"Pay attention, Kenneth." The priest didn’t even bother looking back, already on the march again as his voice sliced through Ken's thoughts. "This is your lesson."

"My lesson, huh?" Ken shot at the man’s back, voice low and half-incredulous. "I get to ask questions, then?”

“...ask away, my child.”

Well, damn. Okay, then… He hadn’t expected the man would actually give him that much, given how weird Keane had been acting this whole time but… “That ‘Inveniat Dominum’ thing. You keep saying it.” He frowned at the pronunciation, wondering if he got it right. “What’s it even mean?”

“...Inveniat Dominium.” Keane’s shoulders were tight. “Not a sacrament itself, but something I do find comforting despite it all.”

“O-okay?” Ken blinked. “But that didn’t answer my question, though. What’s it mean?”

“Inveniat Dominium means… ‘may you find the lord.’ The frown on Ken’s face deepened at that answer, not expecting it. “It is my own prayer for the damned.”

“...so, like… keep God in your life, basically?”

“I… I… suppose.” Keane took in a breath as the last word left his lips, but Ken didn’t get any more of an answer than that as the priest kept moving, already returning to his ‘lesson’. "Evenings were scripture drills and what they called resilience rites." 

The father’s voice echoed in the cavernous dining room. "Picture cold baptisms in winter water, breath held until the world shrinks to a pin. Picture fasting until your stomach screams, then sparring with men twice your size. They wanted the mind to stay lucid when the body was breaking. By the third year, we could take a vampire’s blow — bone-crushing, wall-splintering — and still drive the stake home."

“And you had time to learn all the priest stuff in between the torture too, or…?”

"Theology, you mean?" A sound that could have been a laugh left Keane’s lips as he kicked open a door to what looked like a pantry, a hissing Newborn cowering beneath trash. "Yes. Enough to debate a cardinal. But mostly, I learned how to end a thing that doesn’t die easy. Inveniat Dominum.”

Ash filled the small space as he turned to face Ken.

"Now, Kenneth, you understand what I’ve told you? You understand the purpose of my lesson?”

“...is it, never to let a priest ship you to the Vatican?” Red eyes spun as he narrowed them. “Cause I wasn’t gonna do that anyway, Keane.”

“You joke, you laugh.” The priest snorted back at him. “And yet you still want to give up dances, first loves, quiet mornings, so you can live like I did? To come out the other end built to break skulls and little else?” 

“I’m already doing that, though!” The words almost left him a yell, Ken biting down on his volume as he remembered where he was. “Like, that’s me right now, Keane.”

“Listen to me, once you cross that door, there will be no boy. You will never find him again and you will spend your life wishing you could.” The father’s nostrils flared wide as he pulled in another breath. “I was seventeen when I stepped into the field and I did not know peace for over a decade past that day. I can stop the charge of a lesser Apostle, yes. But I lost more than that, Kenneth.”

The last vampire, a Fledgling with more sense than the others, tried to bolt, scrambling out a broken window. 

Keane was a black blur of motion, covering a good two dozen feet in a single step before Ken could blink. The Fledgeling didn’t make it out, Keane holding it by the back of its neck even as it thrashed for freedom, hisses turning into actual begging words as another glowing hand closed around its skull.

 "Blüdhaven needs fighters," Dark green eyes stayed fixed on Ken's pair of spinning scarlet. "But it also needs boys who stay whole." 

The vampire’s skull gave way with a sound like a stepped-on egg. "Keep training, learn the prayers, help the Morituri if you must — but don’t rush to trade your youth for my scars. If the night ever drags you in, you’ll fight soon enough. Let it come to you, not the other way around."

Ken just stared at him, at the ash settling on the floor, at the golden light fading from his hands. His own voice, when it came, was just a single word that was both a question and a challenge. "Why?"

"Why what, Kenneth?"

"Why you tellin' me all this? This your version of a 'scared straight' program? 'Don't do drugs, kids, or you'll end up a badass vampire-killin' priest'?"

The father's tired smile returned. "Something like that. If you want a real answer, I see a boy; a boy willing to give everything up to chase violence and to fight a war that would take everything from him. Family is important, Kenny, do not let this war make you forget that."

"Nah," Ken grit his teeth, biting down another yell as he pushed his words out as calm as he could manage. "You're tryin' to bench me. After all that talk about me being a weapon, about my gifts… you're just scared."

"I am scared, Kenneth," Keane shook his head. "And I am also… I am… prudent. And I am tired of seeing boys die."

"I'm not a fucking boy, Father.” He might as well have spat the words into the priest's face the way Keane flinched at them. "Not anymore. You think I can go back to worrying about homework and who's goin' to the prom after all this? Things go fucking bump in the dark and I’m supposed to worry about gettin’ a date, man?"

"You can try.” Three words; each one spoken softly. “You should try.”

Each one pissing him off.

"No." The word was a final thing; a line drawn in the ash of a dead vampire. The other two were just making that line as thick as he could. “Fuck. No.”

The father nodded, a look like he’d lost a puppy in his eyes. "Fine."

And then he moved.

Ken’s Sharingan screamed a warning, but his body was too slow. 

A fist, barely glowing but still mpossibly fast, tapped his chest. 

A push. 

That’s all it was.

But it felt like all the force of a car crash anyway as Ken doubled over all five of Keane’s clenched fingers. For a split second, all the air left his lungs in a shocked gasp and then Ken’s feet left the ground.

Pain exploded up his back, eyes flaring white as he heard the sound of something cracking around him. A second later, old plaster forced his eyes open as it rained down on his head in small bits of broken material.

Ken slid to the floor, mouth open as he tried to piece together what just happened. Even as his eyes spun, chakra forced into them and each one his limbs, his vision swam in a mess of gray spots as he tried and failed to push himself back up.

By the time he blinked a second time, Keane already stood over him; space eaten up in a blur of motion one more time.

"The work doesn’t just toughen you.” 

A hand slapped across his face, Ken coughing as that gold warmth passed through him again with a different level of force; sinuses suddenly cleared and throat burning like he’d snuck some of Harry’s gin. 

"It hollows you out, boy.” Another slap and Ken felt his head move before he could even try to hold it still, eyes itching in his skull. “It makes you a weapon.”A third slap forced a gasp from him, blood dripping from his nose and onto his top lip; the hot taste of pennies fighting against what felt like warm wine in his throat.“A sword of God is no man at all. A weapon of the Faith serves only one purpose.”

Ken just coughed, pulling in more air and cycling his sluggish chakra until he could feel again.

“Every night, you learn to end something that looks human without thought, and to do the same for what is actually human. You teach your hands to break bone like twigs, and then you teach your heart not to care. And soon, there is no line between a vampire and a human that is simply in your way.”

As he caught another breath, Ken jumped to his feet again off nothing but a second wind, rage bitter in his mouth as he darted back to make space. Hands a blur of seals, he sped through all three; Ram, Tiger, Bird. "Katon: En—"

Something blurred across his vision and Ken was forced to fight for air again, fingers like steel around his throat. His hands fell down to his side, the fire in his palms already sputtering to nothing as the darkness in his vision returned with a vengeance.

The priest lifted him off the ground, grip like iron as dark green eyes stared at him like he was one of those ‘enemies of God’.

"That’s the price, son." Keane thrust his face forward until his nose was bare inches from Ken's, eyes boring into him. "Every potential life saved in this war is a trade of your own humanity. Humankind was not made to kill that which bears his face, Kenneth. To save man, you must become less than man."

The boy landed in a heap, coughing for the sweet taste of dusty ash-filled air as the psycho priest finally let him fall.

"So when I tell you to stay in school," Keane’s voice quieted, the man’s face darker than it had been even when killing vampires. "to keep your laughter loud and your heart unarmored for just that little bit longer…” 

He took in a breath, one hand adjusting his glasses. “I beg you to understand that this isn’t cowardice. I do not wish this hollow on any child who still has a choice."

“...Keep God in your life.” Ken pushed himself back to his feet, voice raspy and body a screaming protest of bruised ribs and battered pride. He spat a mouthful of blood onto the ashy floor and he raised his head again, red eyes burning up at the nosy priest. “And stay the hell out of mine.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

…Well, You Were There? – 100 NP

(Assist In) Eliminating an Entire Vampire Nest

[ROLL: Taunts – Devil May Cry] – 100 NPYour mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of elderberries! You are able to come up with witty dialogue, insults, jokes, and one-liners on the fly. Now, taunting does three very useful things. First, it will boost your Style rating. I know, I know, that's amazing, and awesome, and all that. Second, taunting pisses off your enemies. A lot. So much that they'll try to stomp your pretty little face in. While this may seem like a bad thing, it can also be good for you, as the dumbass you're fighting will make a mistake in their rage. And thirdly, a successful taunt will help you get your game on and replenish your stamina.

No One Expects The Irish Inquisition – 200  NP

Face an Executor of the Church in combat.

[ROLL: A Little Bit Crazy – Jujutsu Kaisen] – 100 NPSorcery is a difficult business, you need to be a little crazy and highly motivated to cope with it, and the heroes are always the first to crack. You have a few screws loose, you’re not bothered by blood and gore and you don’t freeze because of fear, danger, or pain. You’re also capable of cold logic, accepting when you can’t save everyone and acting to exterminate Curses instead.

Nexus Points: 450