Post by Kaija on Oct 15, 2021 0:47:24 GMT
Wanna hear a funny story?
Turns out that dear ol' Dad was right. This really is the perfect age for an Antichrist to rise. Too bad for him that it's me though, huh? Well, unlike my siblings who came into this world a little too early- or maybe at the perfect time, depending on how you look at it- our planet is a world of fucking madness. A melting pot of magic, aliens, mystery, monsters, metahumans and all kinds of crazy shit. So much so that, when a cambion started to come into her own, not a single soul picked up on anything strange.
Lucky me.
Gave me time to grow, learn, train, evolve and figure out just how I want to live and what I want to do with this curse hanging over my head. You know, the demons that keep coming over from the abyss and tormenting people for little more than their sick sense of amusement. That's on me. And, ever since I found the strength to do it, I've been purging them from the streets, one after another. And, I do what I can to help folks even when family isn't involved. I'd rather be proud of who I'm looking at in the mirror and not just struggling to break even, you know?
Well, after a while, I got tired of doing it alone. Tired of hiding behind a secret that was probably getting a lot of people fucked over without them ever realizing what was going on. I mean, sure, some demons rely on raw power to stain the world, but there are plenty more out there that rely on stealth and trickery to poison communities without leaving a trace. At least, not a trace that the average person would be able to pick up on. So, roughly two years ago, I decided to go ahead and let the people know what I am and what I planned to do.
Not before preparing for the worst, of course.
Sure, I might've been planning to put an end to this vicious cycle, but not before inadvertently causing alot of trouble... and grief. I was... honestly prepared for the worst. For everything that I'd done to mean nothing in the face of my true existence. But, like I said, dad was right. Maybe in an earlier age, everything that I envisioned would've happened. But here? The reception was... unsurprisingly mixed, but I never expected government personnel to reach out to me with an offer.
Sure, I might've been cleaning up after myself and then some, but it's not like I didn't have things like school and work to occupy my time when fiends weren't causing a ruckus. Apparently, the suits thought that all of that was a waste of my time; at least until I'd finished my self-imposed quest. So, they set me up with an office, decent pay, the best insurance that money can buy, a badge and a license to kill that would make dealing with skinwalkers hiding in plain sight a much easier problem to deal with. Oh, and they put my dad under a Marshall Security Service to keep him from being targeted while I'm working.
I never bothered with secret identities, after all.
Don't think I'm about to adopt one, either. Anyways, I'm still trying to figure out if my life has gotten better or worse since I spilled the beans. On the one hand? I've got no more big secrets to be paranoid about keeping and my stepdad's safer than ever. On the other? I've got a list of emails that I'll never be able to finish and I swear that more than half of them are just some old folks who're paranoid about the rats crawling around in their walls. And I swear my office gets attacked by religious fanatics with shotguns every other week.
Like, they're not threatening at all, but it's really fucking annoying.
Now, I was supposed to be partnered with a few people, but -surprise surprise- even if the people have chosen to support me, nobody's particularly eager to work with the literal antichrist, so whatever. At the young age of twenty, I've got my own job that lets me train as much as I want. I've got my assistant and I've got my friends to help me out when I need them. As far as I'm concerned? Everybody who passed up working with me can eat shit.
I've got everything I need right here.
So let's get to the stuff you really want to hear about...
I've got 8 tricks up my sleeve right now.
The first ability I awakened. Let's me sense the amount of sin on someone's soul and, recently, I've learned to use it to identify the kinds of sin that one carries... vaguely. Apparently, it was supposed to be a way to help me find shelter with my kin and avoid the more… violent and impulsive humans of this world until I’d acquired more strength.
Funny.
Now I use it to track down the bastards before they have a chance to cause too much trouble. It also helps me to tell the average citizen apart from rapists, killers, and the other dregs of the earth who’d be more than happy to run a knife into my back while I’m not looking.
Saved my ass more than a few times, honestly.
I’m no more durable than your average 20 year old, but I can get back up from a lot of things that would end the average person’s story. I can regrow lost limbs in a few hours, I don’t tend to bleed for very long when I do, and I’m pretty sure that it’s literally impossible for me to get a tan because of this.
Now, I don’t heal fast enough to just ignore bullets, knives or… much of anything, but I’m tenacious. As long as I survive and get enough food and water, I’m pretty sure that I can fully recover from anything short of immediate fatal injury.
A sub-dimension entirely under my control.
And the fan favorite of my abilities from what I’ve been told.
Through the use of “Void Orbs”, stationary spheres of darkness that appear where The Void breaches into our dimension, I can warp myself around, shuttle others, store shit that I might want to whip out in a jiffy later and… quite a few other things, really.
I mostly use it get around quickly and… not get blown up every other Tuesday.
Demon Metal.
Heavy and completely indestructible. And probably the ability that I’ve gotten the best at using. When I first developed this one, all I could make were janky hammers and blades that barely outdid what my stepdad kept in his kitchen. And, to be honest, my hammers haven’t gotten much more useful than they had back then.
I found much more of an affinity for blades.
And now I’ve gotten to the point where the edge of my blades, despite being made of a material this dense, is translucent. Literally see-through, man. I struggle to find things that I can’t cut nowadays but, every once in a while I still find something that I can’t pierce.
Physical Illusions.
With this ability, I can enchant my environment and make people see, smell and hear whatever I want them to. It’s not a psionic ability, but a physical one. And my illusions are more comparable to high-end holograms than the typical mental illusion.
Means that they’re harder to see through, but I don’t get to pick and choose who sees them and who doesn’t. And, unfortunately, that includes myself. But, it’s still one of my favorite abilities and it’s given me a leg up against my opponents more than a few times. Great for distractions, debilitations, disguise and general stealth.
The Endless Horde.
I've got a real love/hate relationship with this one.
A bunch of insectoid lesser-demons that I can spawn in my stomach, release from my mouth, and control psionically. I don't know what they're actually supposed to be called, but I call em' Creepers. Their size varies but I can only make them as big as a large beetle at best for... obvious reasons. And yes, I can feel them crawling up my throat... every time.
Ugh.
From a distance, their armor, small size, six limbs, and the high-pitched hum that they give off make them appear to be common insects, but... they definitely aren't. They're super fucking strong for their size... though that doesn't really mean shit when they're usually the size of a wasp. What they're lacking in physical might, they make up for with speed, agility, and, most importantly, chemical warfare.
Creepers are incredibly toxic to anything that attempts to eat them... outside of demonkind. Even licking them or exposing an open wound to their tiny little legs can result in life-threatening poisoning. And, even for demons, they have no nutritional value. Their main method of attack is spewing acids of varying levels of corrosiveness onto their targets before attempting to either eat or... drink them. And that acid can range from the harmless bite of orange juice to superacids with a ph in the negative hundreds.
Yes, superacids are a thing.
They can also shoot webbing that compares to traditional spider silk in the same way that, well, their acid compares to most acids that you'd normally run into on Earth. They aren't indestructible, and I'm not entirely sure if they're flammable, but they're strong enough to slow most brutes down to a crawl if they're even still able to move at all. Especially if they're downright draped in the shit.
From what I can gather, I think they're supposed to be some fancy biological way for me to feed myself. Creepers can use the nutrients they ingest to grow or multiply, but they can also uh... "transmit" some of the nutrients that they've eaten directly to me and essentially replace lunch, or dinner, or brunch, or whatever... And that all sounds great, right?
Well, there's one downside.
A downside that can compound upon itself real fucking fast if I'm not paying attention. Creepers are sentient... and they don't exactly approve of me or what I'm trying to do; no fucking surprise there. I actually kinda have to uh... "enslave" them while they're out to keep them from causing trouble. I can only control about a thousand or so at a time before I start to get overwhelmed, so I'm going to try to keep their numbers sparse if I do have to rely on them. Cuz like, as much as it'd probably put a smile on dear old dad's face, I'm not interested in starting like... a plague or something.
Recently, I've discovered that, with a bit of blood sacrifice, I can make so much more of these drones. The get far... meaner. But, that's something you'll learn about soon, I'm sure.
Sympathetic Telekinesis
The newest trick in my collection. Poltergeist allows me to project my will onto the world around me and control it much like I do my own body. And, before you ask me if I can reach into someone’s chest and squish their heart with my brain…
No, I can’t.
Part of this power being an aspect of will means that will, itself, disrupts it. Or, to be more accurate, living souls do. I’ve never been able to move living things and manipulating objects on their person, while doable, is… challenging. Though, that tends to matter very little when I can just chuck a motorcycle at a guy’s head, you know? And, to be honest…
That’s not even the part I like most about this power.
What separates Telekinesis from Sympathetic Telekinesis is the feedback. Much like the sensation of pressure on your arm when something pushes against you or the feeling of sunlight warming your skin, I can feel the motion of the world around me as though it were my own body.
And it’s not just the matter that I can control. It’s energy. The flow of radiation and excited particles through the space around me. Sometimes, depending on the form it takes, I can even sense magic and other eldritch forces moving through the space around me.
Combined with Sin Sense, I feel like I see more of the world than most people could ever hope to every time I walk outside.
The Glorious Shield.
A programable barrier that warms my chest and whose strength is fully subject to my mental state. Man, I've come a long way with this one over the past two years. Found a nice balance between nerve and confidence, and it shows. Literally. My barrier started out with a dirty red color when I was still a teenager and was very much guided by my fears whenever I got into a fight. It was pretty fucking useless in that state. Then, it progressed to orange when I focused and pushed some of my anxieties out of my mind. Next, it turned Yellow as I started to gain some actual confidence. For the past year, it had been green and I'd finally begun to feel... safe within my second skin, you could say.
Nowadays, when I don my armor, it glows with a bright blue and the static has evolved into a melodic hum.
Granted, it's even brighter and louder than it had been before. The absolute worst tool for me to use if I'm trying to be stealthy or inconspicuous. Still, I feel like I can actually... protect people now. You know, even when I can't just evacuate them. Especially when I bunker down and let the shield expand a bit. I've also learned that, if I bunker down and "flex" with enough force, I can blast nearby enemies away and clear some space or just catch them with a nasty little surprise up close.
It feels good to actually be able to hold my ground for a change.
Turns out that dear ol' Dad was right. This really is the perfect age for an Antichrist to rise. Too bad for him that it's me though, huh? Well, unlike my siblings who came into this world a little too early- or maybe at the perfect time, depending on how you look at it- our planet is a world of fucking madness. A melting pot of magic, aliens, mystery, monsters, metahumans and all kinds of crazy shit. So much so that, when a cambion started to come into her own, not a single soul picked up on anything strange.
Lucky me.
Gave me time to grow, learn, train, evolve and figure out just how I want to live and what I want to do with this curse hanging over my head. You know, the demons that keep coming over from the abyss and tormenting people for little more than their sick sense of amusement. That's on me. And, ever since I found the strength to do it, I've been purging them from the streets, one after another. And, I do what I can to help folks even when family isn't involved. I'd rather be proud of who I'm looking at in the mirror and not just struggling to break even, you know?
Well, after a while, I got tired of doing it alone. Tired of hiding behind a secret that was probably getting a lot of people fucked over without them ever realizing what was going on. I mean, sure, some demons rely on raw power to stain the world, but there are plenty more out there that rely on stealth and trickery to poison communities without leaving a trace. At least, not a trace that the average person would be able to pick up on. So, roughly two years ago, I decided to go ahead and let the people know what I am and what I planned to do.
Not before preparing for the worst, of course.
Sure, I might've been planning to put an end to this vicious cycle, but not before inadvertently causing alot of trouble... and grief. I was... honestly prepared for the worst. For everything that I'd done to mean nothing in the face of my true existence. But, like I said, dad was right. Maybe in an earlier age, everything that I envisioned would've happened. But here? The reception was... unsurprisingly mixed, but I never expected government personnel to reach out to me with an offer.
Sure, I might've been cleaning up after myself and then some, but it's not like I didn't have things like school and work to occupy my time when fiends weren't causing a ruckus. Apparently, the suits thought that all of that was a waste of my time; at least until I'd finished my self-imposed quest. So, they set me up with an office, decent pay, the best insurance that money can buy, a badge and a license to kill that would make dealing with skinwalkers hiding in plain sight a much easier problem to deal with. Oh, and they put my dad under a Marshall Security Service to keep him from being targeted while I'm working.
I never bothered with secret identities, after all.
Don't think I'm about to adopt one, either. Anyways, I'm still trying to figure out if my life has gotten better or worse since I spilled the beans. On the one hand? I've got no more big secrets to be paranoid about keeping and my stepdad's safer than ever. On the other? I've got a list of emails that I'll never be able to finish and I swear that more than half of them are just some old folks who're paranoid about the rats crawling around in their walls. And I swear my office gets attacked by religious fanatics with shotguns every other week.
Like, they're not threatening at all, but it's really fucking annoying.
Now, I was supposed to be partnered with a few people, but -surprise surprise- even if the people have chosen to support me, nobody's particularly eager to work with the literal antichrist, so whatever. At the young age of twenty, I've got my own job that lets me train as much as I want. I've got my assistant and I've got my friends to help me out when I need them. As far as I'm concerned? Everybody who passed up working with me can eat shit.
I've got everything I need right here.
So let's get to the stuff you really want to hear about...
My Powers
I've got 8 tricks up my sleeve right now.
#1 Sin Sense
The first ability I awakened. Let's me sense the amount of sin on someone's soul and, recently, I've learned to use it to identify the kinds of sin that one carries... vaguely. Apparently, it was supposed to be a way to help me find shelter with my kin and avoid the more… violent and impulsive humans of this world until I’d acquired more strength.
Funny.
Now I use it to track down the bastards before they have a chance to cause too much trouble. It also helps me to tell the average citizen apart from rapists, killers, and the other dregs of the earth who’d be more than happy to run a knife into my back while I’m not looking.
Saved my ass more than a few times, honestly.
#2 Regeneration
I’m no more durable than your average 20 year old, but I can get back up from a lot of things that would end the average person’s story. I can regrow lost limbs in a few hours, I don’t tend to bleed for very long when I do, and I’m pretty sure that it’s literally impossible for me to get a tan because of this.
Now, I don’t heal fast enough to just ignore bullets, knives or… much of anything, but I’m tenacious. As long as I survive and get enough food and water, I’m pretty sure that I can fully recover from anything short of immediate fatal injury.
#3 The Void
A sub-dimension entirely under my control.
And the fan favorite of my abilities from what I’ve been told.
Through the use of “Void Orbs”, stationary spheres of darkness that appear where The Void breaches into our dimension, I can warp myself around, shuttle others, store shit that I might want to whip out in a jiffy later and… quite a few other things, really.
I mostly use it get around quickly and… not get blown up every other Tuesday.
#4 Brinesteel
Demon Metal.
Heavy and completely indestructible. And probably the ability that I’ve gotten the best at using. When I first developed this one, all I could make were janky hammers and blades that barely outdid what my stepdad kept in his kitchen. And, to be honest, my hammers haven’t gotten much more useful than they had back then.
I found much more of an affinity for blades.
And now I’ve gotten to the point where the edge of my blades, despite being made of a material this dense, is translucent. Literally see-through, man. I struggle to find things that I can’t cut nowadays but, every once in a while I still find something that I can’t pierce.
#5 The Power of Lies
Physical Illusions.
With this ability, I can enchant my environment and make people see, smell and hear whatever I want them to. It’s not a psionic ability, but a physical one. And my illusions are more comparable to high-end holograms than the typical mental illusion.
Means that they’re harder to see through, but I don’t get to pick and choose who sees them and who doesn’t. And, unfortunately, that includes myself. But, it’s still one of my favorite abilities and it’s given me a leg up against my opponents more than a few times. Great for distractions, debilitations, disguise and general stealth.
#6 Beelzebub’s Gluttony
The Endless Horde.
I've got a real love/hate relationship with this one.
A bunch of insectoid lesser-demons that I can spawn in my stomach, release from my mouth, and control psionically. I don't know what they're actually supposed to be called, but I call em' Creepers. Their size varies but I can only make them as big as a large beetle at best for... obvious reasons. And yes, I can feel them crawling up my throat... every time.
Ugh.
From a distance, their armor, small size, six limbs, and the high-pitched hum that they give off make them appear to be common insects, but... they definitely aren't. They're super fucking strong for their size... though that doesn't really mean shit when they're usually the size of a wasp. What they're lacking in physical might, they make up for with speed, agility, and, most importantly, chemical warfare.
Creepers are incredibly toxic to anything that attempts to eat them... outside of demonkind. Even licking them or exposing an open wound to their tiny little legs can result in life-threatening poisoning. And, even for demons, they have no nutritional value. Their main method of attack is spewing acids of varying levels of corrosiveness onto their targets before attempting to either eat or... drink them. And that acid can range from the harmless bite of orange juice to superacids with a ph in the negative hundreds.
Yes, superacids are a thing.
They can also shoot webbing that compares to traditional spider silk in the same way that, well, their acid compares to most acids that you'd normally run into on Earth. They aren't indestructible, and I'm not entirely sure if they're flammable, but they're strong enough to slow most brutes down to a crawl if they're even still able to move at all. Especially if they're downright draped in the shit.
From what I can gather, I think they're supposed to be some fancy biological way for me to feed myself. Creepers can use the nutrients they ingest to grow or multiply, but they can also uh... "transmit" some of the nutrients that they've eaten directly to me and essentially replace lunch, or dinner, or brunch, or whatever... And that all sounds great, right?
Well, there's one downside.
A downside that can compound upon itself real fucking fast if I'm not paying attention. Creepers are sentient... and they don't exactly approve of me or what I'm trying to do; no fucking surprise there. I actually kinda have to uh... "enslave" them while they're out to keep them from causing trouble. I can only control about a thousand or so at a time before I start to get overwhelmed, so I'm going to try to keep their numbers sparse if I do have to rely on them. Cuz like, as much as it'd probably put a smile on dear old dad's face, I'm not interested in starting like... a plague or something.
Recently, I've discovered that, with a bit of blood sacrifice, I can make so much more of these drones. The get far... meaner. But, that's something you'll learn about soon, I'm sure.
#7 Poltergeist.
Sympathetic Telekinesis
The newest trick in my collection. Poltergeist allows me to project my will onto the world around me and control it much like I do my own body. And, before you ask me if I can reach into someone’s chest and squish their heart with my brain…
No, I can’t.
Part of this power being an aspect of will means that will, itself, disrupts it. Or, to be more accurate, living souls do. I’ve never been able to move living things and manipulating objects on their person, while doable, is… challenging. Though, that tends to matter very little when I can just chuck a motorcycle at a guy’s head, you know? And, to be honest…
That’s not even the part I like most about this power.
What separates Telekinesis from Sympathetic Telekinesis is the feedback. Much like the sensation of pressure on your arm when something pushes against you or the feeling of sunlight warming your skin, I can feel the motion of the world around me as though it were my own body.
And it’s not just the matter that I can control. It’s energy. The flow of radiation and excited particles through the space around me. Sometimes, depending on the form it takes, I can even sense magic and other eldritch forces moving through the space around me.
Combined with Sin Sense, I feel like I see more of the world than most people could ever hope to every time I walk outside.
#8 Lucifer's Pride
The Glorious Shield.
A programable barrier that warms my chest and whose strength is fully subject to my mental state. Man, I've come a long way with this one over the past two years. Found a nice balance between nerve and confidence, and it shows. Literally. My barrier started out with a dirty red color when I was still a teenager and was very much guided by my fears whenever I got into a fight. It was pretty fucking useless in that state. Then, it progressed to orange when I focused and pushed some of my anxieties out of my mind. Next, it turned Yellow as I started to gain some actual confidence. For the past year, it had been green and I'd finally begun to feel... safe within my second skin, you could say.
Nowadays, when I don my armor, it glows with a bright blue and the static has evolved into a melodic hum.
Granted, it's even brighter and louder than it had been before. The absolute worst tool for me to use if I'm trying to be stealthy or inconspicuous. Still, I feel like I can actually... protect people now. You know, even when I can't just evacuate them. Especially when I bunker down and let the shield expand a bit. I've also learned that, if I bunker down and "flex" with enough force, I can blast nearby enemies away and clear some space or just catch them with a nasty little surprise up close.
It feels good to actually be able to hold my ground for a change.