Only a few measly minutes left until the attack.

Pori and Adrian walk in unison towards the supermarket, with their minds each running a million miles a minute currently.

“I think I’m just gonna go home,” Adrian says in a sickly voice, “I don’t think I can do this today.”

“Nooooo don’t make me go in there alone!” Pori says jokingly, she also hits Adrian a few times playfully.

“Haha, I can tell you don’t want me to go,” Adrian says, “I guess I can go in.”

“No no no no, you should go home if you think you should,” Pori says, being serious now. “I’ll just tell Molly you aren’t feeling good today.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine.”

They continue walking, talking about random things that come to mind.

They turn down 3rd Street.

Action Pact

The Invasion

Story by Connor Perry

Demon Hunter

5

“So now that we don’t have school,” Pori suggests, “let’s do something tomorrow!”

“Hmm, like what?” Adrian asks.

“What do you say…” Pori takes a moment to think, “the mall?”

“Ooh, we can go to the movies after that!”

“Perfect!”

They begin chatting about all the stores they plan to go to while there. As a matter of fact, they may have been able to see the signs of the attackers sooner if they were not so deep in conversation. It only becomes clear to them the second the two monsters touchdown.

The crash of the giant stone golem, whom we now know as Brash, shakes Pori’s and Adrian’s ears. Fossan lights his cigar just by waving it in the air very swiftly.

The fear strikes Pori’s heart like a million knives. She cannot believe the demonic foul beasts that are standing in front of her. At this moment, nothing feels real. Her old life feels so fragile now. Her encounter with the old man at the house felt like a warning sign.

Adrian holds his arm out in front of Pori to shield her from Fossan and Brash. Pori looks to Adrian as if she has no clue what he’s doing.

“Pori.” Despite using her affectionate name, his tone is anything but. “Run. Now.”

Pori stands there for an eternal moment, uncertain of what exactly she just heard. “W-What?”

“Just go!” Adrian clarifies. “I’ll distract them. You just run, and don’t look back!”

Before he can understand what he himself is even doing, Adrian dashes towards the two hostile entities. They simply observe this boy running towards them, without even flinching or moving their feet. Adrian yells as he approaches them, hoping Pori would be long gone by now. Perhaps, maybe he did this to protect their day of fun they would be having tomorrow. In hindsight, that seems like the only logical answer to him.

Fossan isn’t taking any of this however, and simply holds his hand up, palm flat, pointing towards Adrian. Adrian doesn’t take this as a threat and steps within punching distance of Fossan. This proves to be a mistake however, as Fossan casts a light around Adrian, a spinning orb encircling the man as it gets brighter and brighter. Eventually it becomes too bright for Pori to observe, who is still frozen in fear, so she is forced to look away. When her gaze returns to where Adrian was standing, she comes to see Adrian is no longer standing there. It seems as if Adrian was destroyed.

Pori screams bloody murder and runs the other way. Her body enters survival mode as all of her energy is expended in order to maximize running speed. Pori would not notice it here, but she would top just over 24 miles per hour here, which is a speed she has not once reached yet.

“Go get her, Brash Harambit,” Fossan says.

“Yes sir.” Brash submits and leaps past Fossan, bolting towards Pori at a slightly faster pace than she is currently running. She makes it out towards the main road, but there is a paradoxically low amount of cars on the road. Of course the one time you’re being chased by a demonic entity from an evil world, there’s no one for you to flag down, Pori thinks to herself.

She notices Brash getting in real close with her, and out of panic she turns down a dead end alleyway. As one in their right mind would suggest, this is a terrible idea. Pori on the other hand, did not have much time to flesh out a plan, and her executor was approaching rather swiftly in the rearview, so she did the only thing she could.

She runs down the alley as Brash takes a moment to re-adjust itself to running perpendicular to his last route. Pori scans the layered brick wall in front of her for any obstacles in which she can use to climb over and escape, but there are none.

Pori watches as Brash slows down, and Fossan appears again from behind it.

“I guess it’s best we take all three,” Fossan remarks, relighting his burned-out cigar, “that way we can maximize the possibility of obtaining our candidate.”

Pori screams for help, but even she knows this is a desolate attempt at being saved. No one’s coming for her. It’s best she just sucks it up and gets it over with.

“There’s another powerful presence!” Fossan juts into a straight position, standing as straight as a skyscraper. “A VERY powerful one!”

Brash turns around to notice a figure coming down the alley towards them, holding a sword. A blackish-purple distorted entity floats behind it. The being comes into light, and it turns out to be the older man Pori saw at the ruined house!

“Why don’t you guys pick on someone your own strength?” He taunts them.

“It’s a hunter,” Brash says cautiously, “do we advance?”

“He hid himself,” Fossan comments, “interesting…” he thinks for a moment, “you take out the hunter, I’ll kill the girl.”

“Got it.” Brash rushes towards the man, and slams its rugged fists down where he was just standing. Like some sort of comic book fighter, he lunges out of the way with superhuman reflexes. The being on his back becomes a bit more visible. It’s a transparent black ghost with a samurai helmet, and held the traditional katana and wakizashi swords of a samurai, which were also tainted black and slightly transparent.

The man places his arm on Brash’s back, and flips to shift himself onto the back of the golem. He plants his sword in the center of Brash’s back, sending it all the way through its chest. The sword glows blue, as do his arms.

“Protect her, Miyamoto!” the man yells.

“Okay, master!” The ghost flies over towards Fossan.

Fossan is stalking his prey, Poriyander, right as Miyamoto strikes. It seems Fossan was always equipped too, as he pulls out a longsword to combat the ghost. Fossan takes the offensive and drives Miyamoto back a bit, right as the man attacks Fossan from the side.

As skilled as Fossan is, he cannot combat the spiritually enlightened man and ghost, as their weapons glow blue and black respectively with their own individual spiritual auras. Fossan strikes each of them back once, then moves away from them to buy time. He holds his palm up, as if performing a one handed prayer, with only his index and middle finger uplifted. In conjunction with the hand movement, Fossan himself begins to light up.

“I guess you and I will have to catch up at a later time, Poriyander.” Fossan says as he disappears into the light. Pori’s heart stops, now that she’s aware the demon knows her name.

Before she can even process it however, the demon is gone.

Miyamoto absorbs himself into the man, leaving just him and Pori alone in the alleyway.

“You…” Pori cannot even find the words to say here, “you saved me?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about your friend though.”

Pori begins crying now that the facts have begun to settle in. “They killed him!”

“I wouldn’t rule that out just yet,” the man suggests, “I’ve encountered that particular demon a few times, and generally he tends to abduct humans instead of killing them.”

“W-what??” Pori pauses her crying momentarily.

“Listen girl, let’s just get you to safety. I’ve already called law enforcement, they should be arriving here soon.” He pauses his commentary to help get Pori up, while she still cries over the stress of the encounter. “It’s gonna be okay, and chances are we'll be able to get your friend back.”

“W-we?”

“Yup! My name is Allan, I’m a part of the Supernatural Investigation and Hunting Organization. We recover people abducted by demons on a daily basis.”