Long Journey || ATEEZ

Never Underestimate A Demon

In seconds, the prisoners at the rear had been taken, blood blooming on their dirt-encrusted shirts. Shouts and screams of horror and fear echoed across the spacious chamber, bouncing across the hooded walls and raising a cacophony of panicked noise. Hongjoong quickly opened the trapdoor, and bellowed for the prisoners to escape.

They couldn't hear him.

But they had to hear him.

As he spoke, as he struggled to let himself be heard over the gunfire and screams, the prisoners were being mowed down, and there was nothing he could do about it. They were all going to die – including his crew and himself – and there was nothing he could do about it. Unless...

"Wooyoung! Wooyoung, listen to me!" Hongjoong said, frantically tapping the panicked holin, whose voice no matter the situation still rose up above the others perfectly. "Use your holin powers!"

"What do you need me to do, hyung?"

"Just tell everyone to get through the hatch as fast as possible!"

"Alright – cover your ears, hyung!" Wooyoung inhaled, and bellowed the captain's orders across the room.

"Help them get through safely!" Hongjoong ordered as he unzipped part of his suit and pulled out his gun from inside.

"What are you going to do, hyung?!"

"I'm going to take them down," Hongjoong called back, a steely glint in his eyes. The mask that had covered his face had been long since lost to the chaos, and he gave Wooyoung a strained grin. "Tell the others to just keep helping the prisoners get through – me and Seonghwa and San should be enough to take those guards!"

And so, Hongjoong leapt into the fray, his gun held before him, and taking care to inform any of the panicked prisoners around him to get to safety.

Seonghwa and San had already caught onto what was going on, whilst the other four crewmates had rushed over to help Wooyoung with the prisoners. Though many seemed to have leapt through into freezing cold waters by now, many were still being picked off, one by one, their crimson insides washing the floor with a deathly red, and making it all the more treacherous for the survivors to pass over.

More guards kept coming, no matter how many times the three demons shot them down. They didn't even seem to have a speck of remorse left for their fellow colleagues that lay on the floor a bloodied mess. But then again, these were the people that had left those prisoners to rot, to starve, snatching them away from their families and loved ones and taking them to use them for who even knew what. Whatever that 'Happy Days Research Facilities' business was, it definitely wasn't good.

Thank the gods, San had used his initiative and was using his Dark Energy to shield them from the guards' gunfire; without it they would surely have joined those corpses on the floor by now. Though it had its limiting factors – the barrier worked both ways, and therefore Seonghwa and Hongjoong couldn't shoot from behind it. They'd solved this problem by San routinely letting it dissipate, wherein Hongjoong and Seonghwa would fire (in which Seonghwa's bullet always found its mark, and Hongjoong's most of the time).

But by now, most of the prisoners had either escaped, or were dead.

"Captain!" Yeosang yelled from the safety of the trapdoor. The others had long since gone, guiding the ones unable to swim through the water, and he was the only one left. "Let's go!"

Hongjoong shot down yet another white-suited guard, and turned to the other two demons.

"Let's go," he nodded to them, and began to inch backwards, never keeping his eye off the enemy. "Yeosang! You go ahead! We'll join you soon."

"Alright captain!" Yeosang called, and he disappeared into the murky navy-blue depths of the sea.

"When I count to three," Hongjoong said, eyeing the last guard warily. The onslaught of guards had stopped – for the time being, at least, "I want the both of you to run to the hatch – San, it's okay for you to let your shield go. I have my own Dark Energy for if things get hairy, after all. I'll join you in no time, don't worry."

"What do you plan on doing, hyungnim?" San asked worriedly, biting his lip.

"Taking the last one down."

"But—!"

"One," the captain said firmly.

Seonghwa placed a gentle hand on San's shoulder, and the demon backed down, and began to ready himself to make a beeline for the trapdoor, which still hung open, the sound of the waves lapping at the hull fluttering through.

"Two."

Seonghwa's grip on San's shoulder tightened; the two demons tensed up.

"THREE!"

In an instant, San's shield disappeared, Hongjoong fired his gun, and the other two demons leapt across the room and plunged themselves into the water.

"DAMNIT!" came Hongjoong's roar of frustration as his shot missed. He then tensed up, fear flooding his eyes as he tried to cock the gun and fire again, and nothing happened.

"H-h-h-ha!" the guard stuttered in triumph. Though his hands shook at his gun handle, he knew he had won. This stupid idiot – whoever the hell he was – was weaponless now. "You and your gang of infiltrators are done for now!" he gloated and squeezed the trigger of his own gun.

BANG!

There was an ice-blue flash that blinded the guard, and an absence of the splattering of blood and thump of a fallen body.

The light cleared, the guard stopped shielding his eyes, and gasped in fear. The intruder was still standing, brass-coloured bullet in between his teeth, electric-blue sparking off it violently every two seconds or so, and an almost unhinged grin spanning his face – though in the next second it was swept off, pushed under the rug for another day, and fury overtook it.

Hongjoong spat the bullet out of his mouth, and advanced towards the paralysed guard, his eyes livid. In the next second he had him pinned to the wall, gunless hand at his throat.

"Why are you doing this?" Hongjoong whispered, his voice deadly low.

"Doing wha—AARGH! D-d-d-don't hurt me, please," the guard bleated as Hongjoong pointed the gun at his forehead. He seemed to have momentarily forgotten that it was bulletless under fear.

"Why are you doing this to innocent people? Enslaving them, basically torturing them, denying them any basic yuzeul rights!" Hongjoong asked, his voice rising with each word, his eyes flashing merciless blue.

"I-I-I-I don't know...!" the guard whimpered, his entire scrawny frame, though mostly masked by his baggy outfit, trembling violently. "I s-s-s-swear!" he squeaked as Hongjoong tightened his grip around the other's neck. "We–we were just following orders! P-Please! It's the truth, I swear!"

The captain huffed, that terrifyingly intense anger cooling, before releasing the guard. He fell to the floor in a heap, gasping and coughing and shaking harder than Hongjoong had when he had been cornered by those gangsters for the first time.

"P-please," he choked out, "spare me."

Hongjoong turned back to the man writhing on the floor, some small semblance of pity passing through his glowing eyes burning icy-blue. He turned towards the trapdoor, and the sea beneath it. The guard gasped in relief.

"Th-thank you," he spluttered. "Thank you," he repeated, before his sudden scream pierced the small room. Centimetres from his face, a single thread of Dark Energy had pierced the wall behind him.

"Never," Hongjoong said, not even bothering to look back at the pathetic little coward, "underestimate a demon, ever again."

And with that, he leapt down the hole in the floor, closing the trapdoor with him, and leaving the terrified guard to make futile efforts to slow his thumping heart.