Alucard sighed, looking out into the vast bloodbath before them. Monsters, humans, other races he didn’t care to remember the names of, they were all dead, dying or healing up. This was war, something he understood. Death and murder. He smiled, dressed in his red attire, pistols in hand loaded with dark monofilament bullets. Was he happy here? Yes. Did he want to be here? Also, yes. With a manic laugh Alicard walked into the endless bullet and bomb fire of the no mans land area, taking aim at his first target. A Nexus sniper, sporting a neat rifle he would be taking later. Time slowed for the vampire, taking aim and using his vampiric sight to gaze across the distance, seeing her helmets visor, seeing through it. He saw their eyes, smiled wider, and fired. The bullet was a blur as it passed across the great distance, reaching the snipers helmet, breaking the visor, and found their eye, tearing the bulb into a gore of flesh and fluid, reaching the back of their eye socket, breaking bones and sending shards of skull into their brains. It then rushed through the flimsy flesh of their brain, reached the back of their head, shot out in a blast of bone, blood and brain matter, exited the back of their helmet, and hit into a Nexus medic behind them.
“Med down!” Alucard declared with pride. “Just like TF2.”
“Show off.” Leon said from behind the cover still. He grabbed Alucard’s coat, yanking the vampire back down as a large tank shell hit where he was standing just seconds ago.
“Owe! Also, I would have survived that.” Alucard said with a huff, getting off the trench floor to his feet.
“I know, but I don’t want to find out it blasted you all the way back to Homeworld.” Leon said, looking through binoculars.
“Agh. This is stupid. I should be out there, hacking and slashing those nazi wannabes up like a kid at christmas. Why are we keeping back like this again?”
“Because even though we can push them back that far back, that pushes them into the Void, their territory, and for us that’s a disadvantage.” Leon retorted. “Last thing we need is every delete in the void entering this fight.”
“Honestly surprised those fucks aren’t already. You’d think Vincent would have nabbed every delete in the void for this war, yet here we are not seeing a single one.”
“Well we don’t have eyes in the void so not much we can really do there.”
“Agh! What about King’s nothingness?”
“Useful but not our immediate answer, besides, Void Key weapons have been used before, so we can’t rely on his nothingness for every fight in case it’s that Keys void in those swords or bullets.”
“Yeesh. I preferred it when I was the only real monster in the world. Heh, at least on my world.”
“Yeah. Never thought I’d miss the T virus so much.” Leon agreed.
“Heh. Good times. So, what’s the plan then?” Alucard asked, turning an eye over to the soldier who was also one of the twenty that made up his heart. He always found that hilarious. An insane vampire, had a heart that was worthy of such a power and role in the universe. It felt like the start of a cosmic joke, or a bad fanfic.
“Same as it’s been. Keep them pinned til the lab rats can find us a means into the void itself.”
“Yeesh. This is not gonna be a short fight then.”
“Nope.”
Alucard grinned wider. “Good.”
Peccator was in his lab. Vials, tubes, beakers and jars of various type and filled with various pulsating Nothingness. “Experiment Y799K5… Failure.” He sighed, tossing the jar with a purple looking Nothingness thorns pulsating within it. Again he opened his notes, making adjustments and comparing them to the notes of the former delete child who made an artifact that made Bravery Nothingness, not as potent as it should be but was a better use than nothing. "What's missing?" He sighed, rubbing the stump where his pinkie finger used to be. "Does it really take a body to act as fuel? Is that the only means? Burn as fuel endlessly for a flame that creates Nothingness? The artifact converts the basic Nothingness into Bravery Nothingness, but unless collected or infused it temporary, and far less potent than my first batch."
"It makes sense that a body would be the perfect fuel." Looking back, Peccator saw Core enter his lab. The only person Peccator could really work with on his projects. "Nothingness keeps the body moving, soul bound, without the heart. So, why would that be you think?"
"... The heart sparks the fire, and burns away as kindling while the body burns as the wood, the soul keeping the body alive and from degrading within the flames." Peccator sighed. "The artifact seems to convert the base code of Nothingness from Worry/Concern to Bravery. It seems to do that by having a mini sort of flame within it burning the Nothingness again and the fire is fueled by Bravery based code that converts the expelled Nothingness out. But like smoke won't last long."
"So the question is who burns for Bravery?" Core asked. "That is the question."
"A question with several answers. Ten rem says King will try and burn for it." Peccator said.
"They would but we can't have that. Someone else has too."
"A close tie to Nothingness already would be preferable, strong, and can reassure King."
"So someone who doesn't exist?" Core asked with a laugh.
"Possibly… Possibly."
Stained deep into the stone before Clementine was blood. The blood of Walkers slain as the last of them became yet another corpse upon the world. Two months. It was hard to believe that two months was all it took to save the world she was born to. Her kingdom cured the Walker plague and the walkers themselves were now gone. She moved, walking into her old childhood home. It was worse than when she left. Weeds and plants grew inside along the walls and floors. Walls decayed and showing the framework underneath.
Two things here looked almost preserved, the couch, covered in thick dust and small bits of assorted debris and the kitchen counter, equal amounts of dust and trash decorating it. It felt alien being here. She wasn’t a little girl anymore, and she wasn’t even human either. “This is where you used to live?” Aj asked, the young boy walking up next to her.
“Yeah goofball. I was about your age, maybe younger when the walkers first appeared.”
“Did you like it here?” Aj asked.
“I did. It was my home, but my parents had to work abroad a lot.”
“Abroad?” Aj asked.
“It means far away. They were gone for days or weeks at a time and I had a sitter watch over me for that time. When they were here it was always the best. We were always together, had fun and laughed.”
“Oh. Like, Louis, Violet and the others? We laugh, have fun and all that”
Clementine smiled, pulling the young child into a one armed hug. “Yeah Aj, that makes us a family.”
“So, what happens now?”
“I’m not so sure, goofball. It’s up to The Mother and all that how the world is shaped and formed now.” That was a lie. She knew, her friends knew. The world would first gain safe zones. Many large areas of land where towns, farms and safety could be had, then the walkers, shadow creatures and dungeons would appear. That was how reality was made. At least she knew the Ericson school and most of the south would be within a safe zone.