Chapter 9 - Too late?

'Shit!'

Jason quickly leapt over the front gate and kicked the front door down before he ran down the hall, turned left, and jumped up to the second floor.

Jason could hear which room the sounds came from and immediately kicked it open.

Inside, Saki Yoshida was below her large father on the bed, struggling to push him off of her as he tried to force his face closer to her face and restricted her arm. He wore no pants or underwear, revealing his naked lower body.

"Dad! Please, no!"

An intense fury burned inside him the moment he saw the helplessness in Saki's tear-filled eyes.

With no hesitation, he grabbed the man by the neck with one hand and threw him into the wall. The room shook from the impact, and the man fell to the ground in a heap, his eyes rolling all the way back to his head.

Jason looked back at Saki. She shook like a leaf and both her hair and clothes were a mess.

She looked at him; her gaze lingering, and then back at her father, motionless on the floor, her eyes widening in surprise. "Dad? W-what just happened to him? W-who are you?"

What should he tell her? It should be something that sounds unlikely but not impossible.

"I was walking outside your house when I heard your screams. You sounded like you needed help." Jason grabbed the blanket from the ground and slowly approached the poor girl, who was still letting out tears and sniffling, but she flinched away from him and covered herself. He could tell that she was intimidated by him, and whether it was because of what he did to her father or his large stature, he didn't know.

But it was understandable, given what almost happened to her and the fact that he basically barged into their house and threw her bastard of a father into the wall.

He crouched down, making himself seem smaller, and spoke in a gentle tone. "It's okay. I'm not here to hurt you, and I understand that you're still distressed by what just happened. Here, use this to cover yourself up." He placed the blanket in front of her and slowly backed away with his hands open in front of him.

She looked at him apprehensively before slowly grabbing the blanket and covering her body with it. The action reminded him of a dog being wary of a stranger.

Inside, Jason simply felt relieved. He arrived just in time before anything worse could happen. However, the trauma she'll have after this won't just go away after a short amount of time, and she'll likely need therapy in the future. There was also her father.

He knew she must be having a hard time dealing with that.

[Poor girl… But because we can't kill her, we're going to need to knock her out so that I can extract the energy inside her safely and quickly. Though I can already tell you won't do so anytime soon.]

'Why would I? She's already dealing with enough shit for the time being. For now, we'll figure out another way to extract the energy.'

He was sure there was a method that doesn't require knocking her out or killing her, and his mind was already coming up with many possible methods. It only took him a brief moment to think of a viable one.

'What if we slowly siphon the energy from her?'

[Hmmm. That could actually work. But I'll need to be close to her for a few hours, and there are still those other energy signatures I detected that should be taken care of. Are you sure you want me to stay?]

'Don't worry. I'll take care of that. Download all the relevant information in my head.' Jason already had a plan in mind for those. 'For now, just make sure you siphon the energy from her without harming her.'

[Alright. Time for me to get to work.]

A stream of information about where the energy signatures are flowed into his mind before he felt Wheatley exit his soul and manifest beside him in stealth mode.

Wheatley floated over to Saki, who was still huddled on the bed with the blanket covering her frame, and blue strings as thin as spider webs slowly emerged from her body before connecting to him.

[Okay…] Wheatley nervously trailed off. [Remember what I said about this taking a few hours? Scratch that, 'cause this will probably take *at least* fifteen hours.]

Jason cupped his chin in thought. 'That's far longer than I would've liked, but I still want you to finish it. That energy is most likely the one that caused her father to nearly **** her, and he would've succeeded if I was even half a minute late. If we don't extract the energy, worse things could happen to her.'

[Right. Still, if you need my help, just call for me. You never know if something might happen.]

'I will.'

"Miss," Jason called and Saki glanced at him from the side of her eye. It seems like she's calmed down a little, at least. "Is it only you and that man inside the house?"

Saki shook her head and whispered, "No, my mother also lives here, but she went out to buy groceries."

"I see…" Jason took that information in and stood up, heading towards the motionless body of Saki's father on the floor.

Saki saw this and nervously clutched the blanket around her tighter. "U-um, what are you going to do to him?"

"I'm going to make sure your father won't be able to hurt you." Jason lifted her father's body, his hand holding the half-naked man's neck, making sure she didn't see what was still showing down below. He turned his head towards her, his eyes crinkling behind his mask as he gave her the best smile he could. "It'll be quick. Stay here for now where it's safe."

Jason walked out the door, her father's legs making a scraping sound as they dragged on the floor, and closed it. This left Saki inside her room, staring at the door in silence with only the sound of her breathing accompanying her.

——————

Down in the house's living room, Jason tossed her unconscious father's body on the floor as if it was a bag of garbage. He felt the coarseness of the rope he took out of the ring and tied the man's arms and legs up tightly, using a knot few people could escape from.

"This should keep the bastard still while I deal with the others."

There were multiple signatures around the school, but with his speed, he should —

Jason's instincts and sixth sense suddenly blare like a siren and he summoned a ninjato, gripping it as he surveys the living room. He could sense that there were multiple enemies surrounding him, and he could hear odd, disturbing cries all around the house.

[JASON!] Wheatley yelled. [There's something outside the window! Also, just letting you know, some of the energy signatures I detected from before are all around the house now.]

Hearing Wheatley's call, Jason rushed outside the house with a gun and sword in hand, coming to a full stop when he sighted the monsters that surrounded the house and were trying to get in.

"What in the actual *fuck* are *those*?" Jason stared at the enormous, monstrous-looking, rainbow-colored hornet, snake, bat, and hummingbird.

All of them emanated an eerie aura that reminded him of the Dark Primordial energy they found from before, and created distorted, inhuman cries. The bat had nested up on the rooftop along with the hummingbird, and the snake had wrapped itself around the house.

[Those monsters are affecting the girl somehow. She doesn't seem to notice them or see them at all, which is good! However, I can tell through our connection that her negative emotions have been abnormally high ever since those monsters showed up, which is bad.]

'I'll see what I can do. Make sure she stays unharmed.'

In an instant, Jason aimed his silenced pistol and fired at the giant hornet clinging to the side of the house where they stayed in, and his eyes widened in surprise when the bullet merely went through its head harmlessly as if it was water. What surprised him further was that the hornet and every other monster ignored him, not reacting to the fact that he shot one of them.

Seeing that they completely ignored him in favor of who was inside the house, the best conclusion he had was that they were all attracted by Saki and the energy inside her.

'Damn it. This isn't good. Are these things immune to bullets, projectile damage, or physical harm in general?' He wondered, sprinting and jumping to its head before he swiped his sword with enough force to cut a human in two with no issue.

Again, his sword did no harm to it, and the monsters completely ignored him.

'Okay, I seem to have run out of options here. What the hell could damage these things?' Jason contemplated, his mind browsing through every option when an epiphany hit him. 'Wait, could these things be magical?'

Well, it wouldn't hurt to try, and he had no other idea that could work.

Jason extended his arms as if he were grasping two swords. He closed his eyes and focused, trying to summon a pair of blades that were effective against any magical being. A second later, a pair of swords flashed into existence in each hand. Tendrils of red electricity-like energy trailed up and down the blades.

He had summoned the All-Blades. A pair of swords powered by his soul that he could summon at will after mastering the All-Caste's teachings.

Jason grinned excitedly. 'The red is new, but it worked! Time to test these babies out.'

He had a good feeling it would work.

Once again, he launched himself into the air until he reached the hornet's head and slashed. A red trail followed the path of the sword as it cut through the head, and its bowling ball-sized head flew into the air for an instant before freezing in place. It didn't bleed like he expected. Instead, Jason watched, enraptured, as its rainbow-colored body completely exploded into nothing and gigantic, white, fractured japanese kanji criss-crossed in the air before vanishing altogether with a chime.

Jason felt curious about why that had occurred. It was most likely related to what these things were, and he planned on investigating it further after finishing the other monsters.

Three loud, distorted cries echoed into the air as the monsters seem to finally recognise him as a threat. The bat soared into the air with large flaps of its wings, while the hummingbird followed it with rapid flaps of its own smaller wings.

Jason concentrated on the snake, which had slowly snuck up behind him after he killed the hornet. He stood still with the blades in hand as he waited for the right moment.

The creature lunged forward with its fangs at an incredible speed, but he was even faster, jumping backwards and flipping his blades around into a reverse grip in one fluid movement. From above it, he could see the surprise in the snake's eyes in slow-motion, and before it could pull back, Jason impaled both eyes and landed on its head.

'Gotcha!'

The snake bucked and writhed like a wild bull, its hiss of pain echoing through the air as it tried to shake him off, but he kept his grip on the blades and remained steady, pushing them further into its head. Even after all that, the snake was still alive, so with a quick motion, he pulled out both blades and drove them towards the snake's brain. The snake's thrashing grew more and more frenzied, sending dust up into the air and the sound of its head smacking the ground echoing around them. However, it was only for a brief moment; the snake swiftly going limp and silent.

The entire exchange from beginning to end only took 10 seconds, so it doesn't seem like his efficiency got worse. In fact, it was far faster than what he would've been able to do before.

After the snake died, the same thing that happened when he killed the hornet occurred. Its body exploded into nothing and gigantic, white, fractured japanese kanji criss-crossed in the air before vanishing altogether with a chime.

Jason landed on the ground with far more confidence than before. "Two down, two more to go. Now where the hell are those flighty bastards?"

As soon as he finished his sentence, he hears the shout of a woman.

"Come, Suuki! Jinki!"

Jason looked up in surprise and sights a long, golden-haired woman wearing a short grey skirt and a grey buttonless jacket, black hat, black bra and long black boots. While she rode a lion, she wielded a whip in one hand and a pistol in the other.

What baffled Jason, though, was that she was doing it all in the damn sky, far above every house and building in the neighborhood.

Jason took a moment to just stare. "*That* is one of the strangest things I have *ever* seen in my whole three lives."

What the fuck is going on in this world?

———————

Author's Note:

If you have any feedback at all, just comment or give a review.

Also, I feel like I'm going too slow with the pacing. If you agree, tell me, cause I'll speed it up.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading!