The Sin Hunter: Double or Nothing

Even Gods Have Limits

A shrill whistle alerted the guard dogs to the intruder in the warehouse. Ears raised, teeth gnashing, and barking shaking the warehouse, the clicking of ammunition and the sharpening of blades finished off the thoughts of the mob when the doors into the facility blew open, a spray of decaying blood flaking across the path as heads rolled and screaming followed the boldly drunk mobsters into battle. Bullets ricocheted from every surface, some even damaging the masked psychopath as he strode with bored expectation across the floor, right to the edge of the balcony. In a flash, every soul had been harvested and added to the collection with the rest of the crowd beneath his coat.

The clicking of gears in his scissor-bladed gauntlet alerted the presence of another, joining the serial killer on the balcony. Boots snapped with the strings of spurs and the flapping of a strawberry red trench coat when the Crimson Stripe turned to face the enemy in the doorway. "So here you are. At long last, we are reunited." The fedora-clad figure said nothing, opting for a large katana blade in their gloved hands. The Stripe tilted his mask to the air, breathing deep the harsh, ash and smog-choked air. "Like flowers in a summer field, isn't it? What a beautiful place..." the Crimson Stripe trailed, swinging from his side as the scissor blades collided with a well timed parry, "to DIE!"

In one sweeping glance, the trench coat flashed across the Stripe's unnaturally clean mask, swirling into life before driving the blade of penetration through the Overlord's shoulder through the right. A sickening splash of blood coated the balcony as the serial killer gasped in shock. The flurry of reds and brick browns drove him back, forcing him into the cold, quiet dark of the warehouse. The Crimson Stripe rolled to his feet, breathing deep as he seized the head of a decapitated Sinner, slowly draining the blood onto his wound as bullets rocked the warehouse, shattering glass above. The shock made the Crimson Stripe drop the head in shock, twisting around to face the scene.

Dark. That's what he would have described the scene as. The Crimson Stripe turned slowly, circling with himself and his eyes closed. Not the eyeball within his mask, however, for it was not his to close. "Bravo, my brave assassin! Bravo indeed. You've put on quite the show for your audience." The serial killer rolled up his sleeve with the scissor blades, laying his palm upon the cold concrete floor. "But a tune is no song without an END!" Blood filled and spiked from the floor in volleys of electric swing, spiking into the rafters and sending something leaping for safety. The Stripe opened his bloodshot eyes, snapping onto the trench coat.

"There you are," he growled, swinging with his other arm as the scissor blades sliced through the air in ribbons of razor sharp blades, hacking through the girders and rafters in a flash. Dust crumbled and fell around the building as the Crimson Stripe laughed, a cold, heartless laugh, striking at the rafters with a pinpoint of his target in his mind. But this cloak and fedora was fast, far faster than the Crimson Stripe had ever anticipated. 'I understand and accept the rules of combat,' the serial killer echoed over and over in his mind. Another beam fell, then another and another, crumbling to dust beneath his magic attacks. Like his enemies, things always fell eventually.

At last, the mass of red and brown leapt from the rafters, a blade swinging out to strike the blades of the Crimson Stripe's scissor gauntlet. Showers of blood exploded from the clash, forcefully driving back the madman to the balcony where he was thrust through showers of glass, searing along the scars and wounds of his flesh. The Overlord, enraged by such humiliation and tired of such games, struck the earth with his own demonic scepter, swinging back at the brutal machete blade and shattering the steel into pieces. His attacker gazed at an empty hand guard in stunned silence, as they had remained for the entire fight. The blade was folded over thrice on itself, having such force to shatter three layers of steel was astonishing!

As the dark red assassin leapt for the balcony, soaring over the lip and disappearing, the Crimson Stripe gathered himself, clutching bits of broken glass in his suit and all over his face, picking bits out as he moved toward the ledge. Planting a hand on the rail and gazing out over the pier, a slow fog rolled into the docks, snapping lights on like lightning in a thunderstorm, highlighting the outline of the fleeing assassin, on foot no less. The Crimson Stripe willed every ounce of his bleeding mask to smile and wave, not pursue the attacker. 'To follow him into the fog is surely my demise. And if he, not an Overlord nor a master of his work, was able to engage in combat for so long, I grow concerned by the display tonight and worried if he should return.'

The Crimson Stripe stepped back into the dim warehouse light, stepping over broken glass and retrieving the limbs of his dismembered attackers. Humming a slow tune to himself while severing limbs from the mobsters, pouring the blood across his suit and tie in a bath of gore and filth, the Crimson Stripe felt the glass shard popping out of his suit, his muscles and limbs reforming, reshaping in strong, flexible stature. Standing upright, taller now than he once was, the Crimson Stripe swept up his coattails, striding out of the abyss of dust and blood with the same shrill whistle he had started with.