The Skittering Chaos (Worm/Hazbin Hotel)

The Skittering Chaos Chapter 20

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“Streets are pretty quiet, not even a patrol,” Sherrel notes as she drives down the streets into Crimson territory.

“There are only a few patrols out right now,” I explain as I continue to feel the congregation of those bugs I had attached to gang members earlier in my scouting of Crimson territory in one of the warehouses. Two of Simon’s bots are moving along side us, keeping pace as we drive down the street with impunity. At the same time, those of my swarm that wouldn’t have been able to keep up cover the robots and hold onto the van while my fliers carry the rest. That of my swarm that isn’t with us is on Anthony’s vehicle ready to assist him and his recruits.

“Most of the gang is at a rally at the moment, the beast is working them up for an attack, trying to get morale back up,” I continue on. With most of what remains of the gang, which in truth isn’t a whole lot after all of the attacks from the Vigilantes, ourselves, even the failed Raz push and the subsequent robo biter hit and runs put a significant dent in the active cannon fodder of the Crimson Gang. Were it not for their heavy hitters, they’d have likely dissolved by now, or fled the city.

“Shit, if they’re at a rally right now, wouldn’t the guys we’re after be there too?” Adam asks once more comfortably in the turret.

“Just the snake, the Beast wants the Crimson clones out and about to watch for dog attacks with about a squad guys with them, sounds like they are listening in on it though,” I say as we’re starting to get close to the group.

“Skitter, we’re near the first target, what’re we looking at,” I hear Anthony through the phone. I’d sent him and his boys to start hitting some of our other targets. Of the three places, two were warehouses which were lightly defended, with one only having two guys there playing cards, while the other is a large garage beside a gas station, with several vehicles inside, including something that felt like a tank to my bugs. I’m almost tempted to leave that be. It would be easier to just let the enemy flee than to slaughter them to the man, but then they would just go out and pillage what ever settlements and villages are out there in Hell.

“The first place is Crimson’s main garage, they got other places but this one has something special that I think Sherrel will enjoy you picking up for her,” I say which of course immediately draws Sherrel’s attention.

“What’s there?” both Sherrel and Anthony ask simultaneously, their interest peeked.

“There is a big armoured vehicle in the garage there, part of the reason why I’ve got a part of my swarm with you. It feels like an APC but it with the actual gun on it,” as I say that, Sherrel does the weird eyes off the road thing as she looks at me, her resting O lips shifting to a manic grin as she looks to me.

“We’re getting an APC?”

“Or an IFV,” I remark. They have tanks just laying in random warehouses down here. It wouldn’t even surprise me if they could get a hold of modern military vehicles; especially since hospitals have power armour and laser weaponry… which I kind of want.

“You hear that Skiddy, Skitty’s getting me an APC!”

“The fuck!? How the hell am I going to compete with that!?” Adam complains

“I’m sure you’ll think of something, hon,” Sherrel calls back to Adam before she finally turns back around to watch the road.

“Anyways, once the garage has been dealt with, I’ll take my swarm back while you bring the more expensive vehicles back and torch the rest along with the fuel. Simon is sending some of his boys over to take on the other warehouses that the Crimson gang is keeping some of their loot in,” I continue with relaying my commands to Anthony.

“Roger that boss, Anthony out,” and with that I end the call.

“They’ll be on the left,” I call out and watch as the turret immediately starts turning left. As we round the corner, I see a group of Crimson gang members walking down the road in front of some shops with blown out windows. Among the demons are two human looking men walking with them, the only ones without guns. The two look kind of red and beefy, though not like when Crimson had fully gorged himself on blood. Rather it seems that they’re still coming down from their transformation. The moment the van starts rounding the corner the few in the group looking back our way act on instinct. One demon levels his gun while one of the humans grabs a demon and they both dive into the store. As the turret comes into view, the one who’d been raising his gun to shoot at the van realised his mistake and shouts to alert the rest of the group.

Right as Adam shoots.

The round impacts into the ground near them and within moments they’re consumed by a fiery explosion as those closest to the blast fall apart and have their limps torn off them as the bits of them splatter across the store front. The Crimson clone who didn’t dive tumbled head over heel before he finally stopped, his neck and arms in completely wrong angles as blood pools around where his body lay. The Crimson clone that tried to jump into the store with one of his companions is sent rocketing into the ruined store, having been in mid-dive when the van’s cannon fired, practically pulping the demon he had grabbed as it ends up between the demon and whatever he landed on.

With my swarm I started moving some in, at the same time, I can feel Anthony and his men reaching the garage. Not wanting to leave anything to chance, I start to move the swarm I have with Anthony towards the place. Before my swarm reaches one of the demons guarding the outside though, Anthony comes to a full stop and fires off a round at the guard. From what I can feel through my bugs on him, the Crimson guard didn’t even have a chance to raise his own weapon before he falls back and goes limp.

With my own part of my swarm, I send them out to deal with a few guys heading our way, attracted by the cannon going off. While the Crimson gang’s territory is only lightly patrolled at the moment, they still have a few patrols walking around, only one or two guys on foot in each patrol. I hear the sound of a phone or two that survived ringing from the carnage.

“Hold on,” I say as Sherrel shifts the gear to reverse. “The Crimson clone in the building there is still alive.”

As I say that, Adam must have heard me because the van’s cannon starts to shift towards the blown in shop window. Though before he can fire, I call out. “Hold on, I want to see what’s going to happen.”

“Come on, can’t I just shoot this nigga and be done with it, shit don’t go right if you prolong it and shit, learned that from Bond and shit.”

“Hold on, I want to see how he powers up, besides, he’ll stand up and give you a clear shot in the moment,” or at least he should. Bonesaw programmed the Slaughter House clones based off of the personality’s she remembered of the members, or were told of them. Since Crimson was known for basically being bullet proof, the clone will act like that, and if not, then I can always just shoot him like I did the first one.

I watch as the Crimson clone, hidden in the rubble but not to my extra senses, begins to gorge himself on his fellow demon. I watch as he does something interesting with his magic, almost pulling at the magic of the demon as he drinks from him. I can guess that he’s likely sucking out the blood of the other, and just so happens to be sucking out the magic as well. I don’t really care for the blood, but sucking out the magic with the blood could be useful.

Though, it feels inefficient. I can sense the magic splattering against the ground around, wasting so much. Moths and mosquitoes have a more efficient way of doing things, and I could probably improve upon Crimson’s method, letting me drink more and faster without wasting too much. With a bit of a shift of my own magic, I let my mouth morph into a more useful mouth for sucking and feel what it is like. Where I had my mouth before, not it’d turned into a long tentacle that I curl up like a moth’s. With a finger I touch it, making sure it was sharp, and pull my hand back as it nearly breaks skin.

We all hear a roar as the huge red hulk emerges from the rubble of the ruined shop front, staring at us hatefully as he starts to walk forward. With another shift I turn my blood sucking mouth back to my normal one.

“Shoot hi-” before I can finish Adam fires the main gun. The ear splitting boom rushes right through me, and everything is deafened for a moment as I hadn’t had time to properly transform my ears, them having been mid transformation when he fires.

Fuck, I can feel a splitting headache coming through already. As I open my eyes again, the Crimson clone is still standing… though, considering I can look right through his chest and the fact that he’s on fire, I don’t think he’ll be an issue, especially as one leg finally gives out and the hulk goes down.

With a bit of magical healing, I can feel the headache fading and my hearing starting to come back. I can hear Skidmark giggling to himself.

“-sus christ, you see that shit, he’s fucking down for the count!”

“So we got two of them, who’s next?” Sherrel asks as I point down the road in the direction of the warehouse that the Beast was using to rally his troops.

“The Beast is getting his people ready for an attack on the Raz family’s territory that way. We can deal with him and his pet snake there,” I say. As I point, Sherrel backs up from the street and starts heading down towards where I pointed.

“Alright, sounds good, though what’s the plan, we just running in there or what?”

“I’ll be heading to the roof and will flush them out with my swarm. From there, you and the bots wait for them to start panicking before barging in and hitting them hard,” I tell them as Sherrel starts making a b-line straight for the warehouse the Beast is broadcasting himself from.

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“How’ve the raids gone?” I ask into my phone as I watch over the rally that the Beast is holding. It doesn’t really look like too may people, less than a hundred people to the point that if I got all of my imps minus the Raz family’s and Anthony’s boys together, we might only be outnumbered two or three to one.

“My boys got the stuff dealt with, my dogs and bots took care of the guards and my boys are loading up the loot now,” Simon replies through the phone. Despite his adviser's suggestion, he’d wanted to keep going if only to crush the Crimson gang. Despite how tired he must be, he still is able to control his bots the best of any of us, mostly due to actually having experience using the control system.

“Good, your friend knows where to put our share?”

“He knows,” Simon says through the phone before I hear the sound of a crack and furious gulping. Were he a regular person, I’d have worried about his health, but with a demonic constitution, he’ll likely sleep off any ill effects, like how demons easily heal from the negative physical effects of extended drug use. As for his friend, since packing and divvying up the loot wouldn’t be as important, that would be when he went to sleep.

“Good, I’ll be hitting them in a few moments, have your robots ready,” I say before ending the call.

The Beast was around the mid point of his rallying call. As I already knew, the demon looked like something which had stepped from some mythology of old. Maybe the offspring of Zeus in the form of a wolf deciding to have his way with some woman before fleeing off to Olympus once more. While I’d seen some of him in the videos, his figure as he stood there, shirtless and with his wolf head, it was impressive to behold, in a kind of physical definition kind of way. The man himself was the size of a fully powered up Crimson, standing head and shoulders over all of the rest of the men he had on stage. Only unlike Crimson, he wasn’t a bulging grotesque creature barely kept in the shape of a human, but rather he looked properly proportioned. His humanoid body was like a perfectly sculpted Adonis, complete with an immense size that to smaller demons, must make him larger than life. Then there was his magic, it was more than most demons I’d encountered, enough that if he desired, he could probably pull the same kind of tricks I did with just expelling magic in order to create wind.

Otherwise, the demons near him are less impressive, other than the snake who’s the one which was able to go toe to toe with the robots that Simon had sent into Crimson territory. He looks like much of the regulars of the Crimson gang, though his armour looks better crafted. Though truth be told, the main thing that stood out about him was the fact that the armour that the snake is wearing on his upper body is close to the armour of the Uruk Hai which had marched on Helms Deep in Earth Alpha’s Lord of the Rings movies. Though in addition to the cleaver sword, he’s wielding a double barrel shotgun.

“…We may have been getting hit hard by a bunch of damn imps and those vigilante fucks, but now we have a chance to strike back at them all!” The Beast shouts. In the crowd, I can see several cameras; I already know they have a live stream set up. From the phones that the skeleton crews at the warehouses were watching, I’d been hearing the Beast start his speech. It had mainly started off with an expression of sympathy of the various plights the Crimson gang had suffered, but now things are slowly ramping up.

“Their busy with some mercenary fucks and now that we’ve dealt with the mech dogs, we’re striking back!” as he said this, the Beast pulled off a sheet from something that had been behind him and on it was a detailed map of their part of the city. It’s the same as what I’ve got back at base, only instead of territory being marked out, it had that and more. There were circles all over the place, showing off the various hide outs, with a big red “V” on each of the buildings that had been circled. Some of them were even in Crimson territory, just on the edges.

“With the dogs gone, the Raz won’t have anything left! So boys, we’re hitting the fucks that tried to fuck with us! Now I’ve received some very good info on where the first band of these fuckers are. Each of these V’s here is the hide out of a vigilante in or near our terf, and the X’s are the places where they’re keeping the slaves they stole from us. Now those mercenary fucks I talked about are hitting them right now but they aren’t hard enough to take them out, so we’re going in to show these fuckers why we’ve been allowed to run around this place for so god damn long!”

That map could be rather useful. Especially if we keep growing, we’ll need the guns for our recruits or just sources of money in case of hard times. If the vigilantes keep collecting guns like that one group with the sniper bird had been, then we’ll be set for quite a while with just a single raid or two. Plus, maybe some of them could be reasoned with, and convinced to help with my plans.

Pulling out of my other space my magically enhanced assault rifle, I rack back the bolt, and shoulder the rifle so I can start to aim, only for the beast to flinch and look up at me.

Shit. I think as I hastily bring up my rifle, line up the shot, but he dodges back, and his electricity field is already up, destroying the bugs I’d been using to aim at him. Taking my chances, I make my bugs descend upon them all, a mass of chittering, buzzing creatures of mandible and claw. The reaction from the crowd is immediate, and bullets start flying everywhere as the demons suddenly become aware of the mass of killer bugs. The bugs start to rip into the gang, biting down with all their might, attacking them, and a few of the more magical ones starting a few of the furrier demons on fire with their magic. At the same time, I try to line up my shot with my bugs, firing in bursts at where I can feel the Beast’s magical presence is, but with his super speed, he isn’t where he was as I fire, and my bullets only graze him while he bounces off the walls of the place, zapping both my bugs and his own gangsters as the recoil throws my aim off further as the rifle bounces, having not been set to select fire.

Despite my immediate failure at taking down the Beast, I continue to assault the rest of the gang. Bodies are already hitting the floor as the bigger bugs are able to begin to rip out the tendons of their prey, driving them to the ground to either be eaten by the crawling bugs dropped by my fliers, or trampled by the mass of panicking people. Any kind of discipline and morale that the Beast might have been trying to instil in his forces, just like with Lung’s men back on my first night, was broken. I can already see gangsters fleeing out emergency exits around the warehouse. The Beast snarls before dashing for the loading bay doors while my bullets trail him as I try to fire continuously, adjusting for the recoil just trying to hit him. At the same time, his snake lieutenant grabs one of the men by them and prepares to bite down.

Not wanting to deal with another brute, I direct some of the swarm to him, bugs flying into his mouth as he chokes on them. His jaw snaps shut but it’s already too late. His scales do nothing to protect his soft innards, and already my bugs start to rip into his throat and mouth. His screams join the others as he tries to reach in and grab at whatever bugs entered him, clawing at his mouth and letting in more of them as they continued to fly and crawl into him.

While his snake dies, The Beast breaks through the door, his electricity flaring out and clearing the way for him as his gang members are flung to the side, he come up right in front of Sherrel’s baby in full view of both the van’s turret, and all the robots that Simon had sent with us.

“Yo nigga, what’s up!?” Adam shouts from the turret, either not realising or not caring that the Beast can’t have heard him. Knowing what’s coming, I turn my antennae once more into ear muffs before my bugs hear a click, and the cannon fires. Even without my advanced hearing, the sound is enough to deafen me for a moment. The tank shell flies into the warehouse, and lands in the middle of the crowd, body parts fly out of a gout of flame in a shower of gore which coats the room and obscures the dusty warehouse windows even more. However, I can see the Beast from one of my biters, and see him use his enhanced speed to dodge the round, barely dodging the thing before charging straight at Sherrel’s baby.

It takes less than a second for the Beast to reach the van, and already his electricity is flying across it. I can feel the bugs near or on Adam and Sherrel get incinerated by the Beast’s magical electricity as he starts to climb up the vehicle, passing the front window before reaching up and grabbing the tank barrel. With both hands, the wolf headed demon pulls down, and bends the barrel, turning the tank from an unstable if extremely powerful armoured van, into just being unstable. As he finishes bending the barrel of the van, I reach the edge of the roof as the ringing continues.

Note to self, silence that gun next.

I see the Beast jumps off of the van and towards one of the robots that have all turned their focus onto the Beast. I raise my rifle towards the Beast as the electricity and his brute strength wreaks havoc on the robot, disabling it first before he rips off an arm. Before I can properly line up my shot at him, he moves onto the next robot, ripping into it like he did the first. This time though, I have a shot. I flick the firing mode to semi auto this time before pulling back on the trigger. The shot kills a few bugs I have swarming around the area as I use them to aim at him, though the shot is off, slamming into his offhand arm instead of his torso, blasting through it and taking a good chunk of meat off his forearm. He doesn’t pause to look for me as he grabs the robot with his dominant hand and holds it between me and him as he runs off, trying to get out of my line of sight. I’m only able to fire off two bullets before he is able to get around the corner, the recoil actually helping this time as it lets me get off that second shot. Both shots aimed at shooting through the robot to try and take him down, but the robot must be thick enough that even these large bullets are losing their power as they hit him, or are ricocheting off target after penetrating the robot.

Where is he going now?

While my body can’t see him, my biter can, watching as it is from a rooftop, watching the Beast round the corner of the building where one of my imps is firing upon a crowd of fleeing and flailing gangster as they try what they can to get the bugs off of them. Hoping to catch him, I try to add a bit of the beast’s speed, electricity sparking around me as I leap forth, using my wings raise me up as I bound to the edge of the roof. As I am about to reach the edge, the Beast runs off towards the abandoned building my imp is in.

Before I’d flown to the roof to watch the rally and prepare my attack, I’d ordered the imps with us to spread out into the surrounding buildings. All of them were long abandoned, and I can guess why from all the gang signs painted both inside and out. Each had a few imps watching each of the entrances, waiting for me to send my bugs in and flush out the gangster within. Since the largest entrance was the service entrance at the front, the bots along with Sherrel and Adam were there as well, ready to slaughter them as they tried to escape. Now, they’re sitting ducks as what was supposed to be my coup de grâce, stumbled at the first hurdle. Like Hell am I going to lose another to these second rate Teeth wanabes.

Knowing where my gun imp was firing from and not having enough time to form an insect ball to try to talk with him, I spread my wings wide and use the power of the Beast’s speed to launch myself at the window. The Beast in the meantime bolts up the stairs; moving up them at a ludicrous speed while the electricity starting fires as he moves through the building. The imp, Lary, sees me coming and pulls away from the window, just as the Beast slams through the door. I land as the Beast tries to slam a fist into my imp, but I blast his hand with a gust of magical power, pushing it out of the way as it impacts and slams into the wall. I grit my teeth as the electricity of the Beast slams into both me and my imp as I round my gun on him. I’m about to pull the trigger as a gust of magical wind suddenly slams into me, throwing my aim off and I’m just barely able stay on the window with my lower hands gripping the window sill as I try to pull the gun back on the Beast.

Taking a hand off the sill, I pull my pistol from my other place, and aim it at the Beast, while still fighting the wind to aim my rifle at him. I fire off a few pistol rounds into his chest. He’s winded but throws himself back before I can fire my rifle. The Beast with his speed throws himself back into the stairwell, tumbling down as I hop down from the window sill and place a hand on Lary. He’s spasming from all the lighting and as I focus, I can’t hear his heart. Calling on the healing magic I’d copied from the hospital, I start to heal Lary, pushing the magic into him. For a second, there’s nothing, then I start to hear his heart begin to beat again, and the spasming starts to subside. Hopefully, he’ll live.

The Beast meanwhile hadn’t stopped just so I could heal my imp, but rather continues to flee, speeding out the door of the apartment. I get up onto the window sill, jumping off and using my magical wind to push myself further up to give myself a better shot. The Beast has already sped across the street to Sherrel’s baby, his arm in the window, and was pulling at Sherrel.

“Oh Hell no! Let go of my fucking wife you fu- ah!” I hear Adam shout from below before the Beast pulls Adam out of the car with his good hand as electricity dances across the cockroach. I can smell him frying while the Beast tries to bite at him. As he is about to bite down though, I sense Adam using magic, and like the beetle had, his skin covers up in armoured plates as he stops spasming from the lightning. Instead, he reaches down and grabs the Beast’s off hand. The Beast screams in pain as Adam fights through the lightning to continue to grip down on the Beast’s wounded arm, his long hair turning into a massive shell as he continues to turn into his true demonic form, before he headbutts the Beast, knocking the wolf headed demon down off the van before flicking the Beast the double bird.

With him vulnerable now, I transform my mouth into the long tentacle like mouth from before, and angle myself downwards. As the Beast groans and starts to get up, I pull in my wings, and aim my feet down, before I slam feet first into his head, a wet cracking sound coming from the head hitting the pavement. I bend down and flick my tentacle mouth out, stabbing it deep into the Beast, and started to suck.

He’s still electrified, and it hurts, but I power through is as I begin to suck, drinking in both the Beast’s blood as well as his magical power, a shiver going through me as the magic, whatever it was, rushes into me, filling me up and filling what power I’d used in the fights, and then going beyond. As I drink, I can feel my magical power increasing from what I had before. I’d moan if I had the mouth to do so as the power of the electricity grows weaker while I heal myself. I can feel myself growing larger in my true demon form, my breath becoming heavy as I just continue to sup on the power of the Beast.

I don’t know how long I was there as I continued to suck at the Beast before I finally, finally pulled back. It wasn’t because I had to or anything, but because there was almost nothing left of him, the returns of continuing, continually reducing until it was like trying to get the last of the juice out of a juice box. There would be a bit of power with every suck, but not enough to enjoy. I transform my mouth back as I stand up from my crouch on the Beast’s head, before stepping off of it to look at the withered husk of the demon. He looks like a wolf headed mummy, only without all the wrapping. As I lick my lips, I look to Adam who’s still covered in chitinous armour.

“Sweet lord Jesus, the fuck was that shit?” Adam asks, his far buggier face not being able to convey much in the way of emotion, but his tone is both astonished, and somewhat horrified.

“Crimson’s ability to grow stronger from blood, only I improved upon it,” I say as I use my foot to nudge at him, and accidentally slide the now bloodless demon a good foot.

“I’ll fucking say,” Adam says before a full body shiver seems to overtake him, his antennae twitching like mad as he looks away from the dried up corpse. “I seen a lot of shit in my day, and a lot more freaky shit when high as fuck, but I swear that shit’ll be in my nightmares for at least a good while, fucking Christ on a bike.”

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Hmm, I may have thought that initially when I was setting up the Crimson gang in my head, that they would be more of a danger, but as I continued to think on them, I realised how Taylor, especially one not so caring about how brutal she was and how deadly she was, was such a powerhouse as she just continues to grow her swarm.