I want to thank Duane Sharp for joining my Patreon. I would have liked to upload a chapter of the fic he follows, but since I don't know how, all I can do is thank him through this spam.
Okay, I used the first line so you can read it. If it's not too much trouble, could you go to my Patreon and donate for my breakfast? It's not an obligation, and I won't stop uploading; I'm just asking for a little help. Obviously, the Patreon is about five chapters ahead. Please be kind. Support this poor soul.
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The tinkling of the door to the "Saturn" convenience store had stopped more than three hours ago. It was past midnight in Kuoh, and the peace inside the store was so palpable you could almost breathe it.
At the checkout, Asia Argento was finishing wiping the counter with a damp cloth, humming a soft tune. Beside her, the scene was worthy of an abstract painting about laziness: Tamal, the Hound of the Underworld, was fast asleep on a makeshift "throne." Yugo, in a rare burst of domestic indulgence, had stacked three feather pillows on top of some reinforced wooden crates, covering them with an old thermal blanket. The three-headed pug snored in stereo, his three tongues lolling out and a strand of drool connecting his snout to the fabric.
Yugo Hano was standing near the door, adjusting his dark coat.
"The inventory is balanced, Asia. The three pigeons are sleeping in the storeroom. I've sealed the magical barriers at the entrance," said the history professor, his voice as flat as ever, but with that gentle undertone he reserved exclusively for her. "If Tamal wakes up, give her a couple of expired sausages. I'll be back before dawn."
"Don't worry about us, Yugo-san. Everything will be perfect," Asia smiled, hugging the cleaning tray. "Are you going far?"
Yugo looked out the window at the night sky.
—I have to take care of something... abroad. A maintenance issue.
Asia nodded, not questioning the man who had given her a home. Yugo left the store. Turning the corner and making sure no one saw him, he raised his left arm, turned the dial on the Omnitrix, and crushed the core.
The emerald flash illuminated the alley, and a second later, Jetray's sonic boom tore through the air. The alien manta ray soared above the clouds, accelerating to hypersonic speeds, leaving the Asian continent in its wake.
...
Several hours later, Japan's cold, structured weather had completely disappeared, replaced by suffocating humidity and the smell of smog, street food, and hot asphalt.
Yugo Hano landed silently in his human form. His leather soles touched an uneven surface that creaked slightly under his weight.
He was standing on a rusty corrugated iron roof.
The wind blew, carrying with it the distant echo of cumbia villera, the barking of stray dogs, and the drone of old motorcycle engines. All around him stretched an immense sea of half-finished houses, bare brick blocks piled on the hillsides, a labyrinth of tangled electrical wires stealing light from the public poles.
He wasn't in Japan. He had crossed the Pacific Ocean. He was in a vast capital city of a Latin American country, neighboring his own homeland.
The killer's gray eyes were lost in the urban horizon. Nostalgia struck him in the chest with the force of a sledgehammer. This place wasn't his country, but it felt exactly the same. The chaos, the noise, the smell of damp earth and wood smoke... Everything screamed "Jose" at him. Everything reminded him of the life he had lost. He had chosen a neighboring country precisely for that reason; if he went to his true homeland, he knew the temptation to look for his mother and siblings would be too great, and he would end up breaking the promise he had made to himself to leave them in peace.
But she hadn't crossed the world to have an identity crisis. She had come for work.
Down below, in the unpaved alley that surrounded the house he stood on, there was activity. Three black SUVs with tinted windows were parked. Men with neck tattoos, gold chains, and assault rifles slung over their shoulders guarded the perimeter, smoking cigarettes and laughing loudly. It was the headquarters of one of the city's most bloodthirsty local cartels, a group dedicated to extortion, human trafficking, and contract killings. Pure scum. Human garbage the world wouldn't miss.
Yugo looked at his left wrist.
"Beasts become uncontrollable if you starve them," Yugo murmured in Spanish, a language he hadn't spoken aloud since the incident with the Himejima, except in Asia's lullaby. "I know you're restless. I know the demon blood in my veins has you on edge."
The Omnitrix seemed to buzz in response.
"So much rotten meat..." Zs'Skayr's raspy voice hissed deep in his frontal lobe. "I smell their cruelty. They taste of repressed fear..."
"We made a deal on the rooftop of the Saturn," Yugo recalled, with mathematical coldness. "I promised to release your leash if you didn't touch mine. Here's your feast, Ectonurite. Feed on their terror. Drive them mad. Tear them apart."
Yugo turned the touch dial. The hunched, ghostly, tattered, one-eyed silhouette glowed dark green.
"Good boy..." purred the ghost in his mind.
Yugo crushed the core.
¡FLASH!
The grayish, deathly flash swept across the corrugated iron roof. The temperature on the hillside dropped ten degrees in a single second. The humidity in the air condensed into a fine, spectral mist.
Where the history teacher used to be, now Ghostfreak floated.
The Ectonurite's single purple eye stared down the alley. Its claws flexed eagerly. Yugo relinquished control, remaining a silent, approving observer in the back of his mind.
Zs'Skayr laughed. A laugh that no one in the physical world could hear, but which caused stray dogs within two blocks to begin howling and hiding.
The specter dropped down, passing through the corrugated iron roof as if it were air, entering the wolves' den.
Inside the house, the atmosphere was noisy. There were boxes of drugs stacked in the living room, guns on a plastic table, and about eight men counting wads of cash, drinking beer, and listening to loud music.
Suddenly, the radio flickered. The cumbia distorted, becoming a static, raspy, agonizing sound, before going off completely. The light bulbs hanging from the bare wires began to blink frantically.
"What's wrong, man? Did the power go out again?" one of the hitmen grunted, kicking the old radio.
The hitman's breath turned into a white cloud. It was inhumanly cold.
"Hey, dog... isn't it suddenly very cold?" another asked, instinctively grabbing his rifle and rubbing his arms.
The shadows in the corners of the room began to stretch, lengthening unnaturally, climbing the walls as if they had a life of their own.
A whisper emerged from the walls. It wasn't a language. It was the sound of sharp nails scraping a chalkboard, but it resonated directly inside their heads.
One of the men, the younger one, dropped his beer bottle. He stared at the brick wall. The peeling paint seemed to be moving.
"Boss..." the young man stammered, trembling. "There's something there..."
The wall rippled. And from it emerged a single giant eye, purple and pink, staring at them with cosmic hunger.
Then, Ghostfreak's full figure emerged from the brick, floating in the center of the room. His long claws dangled at his sides. His dead, grayish skin billowed even though there was no wind.
The cartel boss pulled out a large-caliber pistol and opened fire without thinking.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The bullets pierced the specter's body, shattering the wall behind him without leaving a scratch. Ghostly, he tilted his head, his neck cracking with a sickening sound that froze the hearts of those present.
"What do bad men fear?" hissed the Ectonurite, his voice sounding like a chorus of corpses.
Terror erupted. Two of the hitmen screamed and ran for the door. Ghostly didn't even move; he simply raised a claw. His invisible tentacles, telekinetic projections of his ectoplasmic energy, entangled the men's ankles, dragging them into the darkness of the hallway. Their screams were drowned out by the gloom.
"Fire! Shoot that shit!" roared the boss, emptying the magazine.
Ghostly laughed. He lunged forward, piercing one of the hitmen. The man instantly fell to his knees, his lips blue, his eyes blank, his soul frozen by spectral hypothermia.
The Ectonurite wasn't killing them physically; it was breaking them. It plunged into one of their chests and possessed them. The possessed hitman raised his own rifle and pointed it at his companions, smiling with a deranged grin that wasn't his own.
"Julio, what the hell are you doing!" shouted the boss.
The possessed man fired at the ceiling, destroying the last light bulbs and plunging the house into complete darkness. Then, Zs'Skayr abandoned the body, leaving the man convulsing in terror on the floor.
The feast was exquisite. The fear these murderers, torturers, and psychopaths were radiating was the most delicious food the alien parasite had ever tasted. It played with their minds, projecting illusions of their own victims in the shadows, making them shoot each other amidst the collective hysteria.
Up above, in the shared mind, Yugo watched. He felt no pity for these men. They were the same kind of human monsters who had forced him to beg in Japan. They were predators who were now learning what it felt like to be the prey.
In less than three minutes, the whole house was a mausoleum of madness.
None of them were dead, but none would ever be the same again. Those who remained alive huddled in corners, weeping, babbling incoherently, their hair grayed from the sheer psychological trauma of having stared directly into the abyss of the Ectonurite.
Ghostly, he floated in the middle of the room filled with unconscious bodies and catatonic hitmen. He let out a rasping sigh, like that of a lion that has just devoured a gazelle.
"Satiated..." Zs'Skayr purred in Yugo's mind, the parasitic hostility completely appeased. "Ah... terror is a delicacy. You are a generous master, human. I will return to my cage now..."
Yugo regained control of the alien body. He moved his claws and rose, bursting through the corrugated iron roof and emerging once more into the cold Latin American night.
It perched on the neighboring roof, making sure it was far enough away from the scene. It brought its claw to the symbol hidden in the folds of its chest and pressed it down.
RED FLASH!
The flash illuminated the night and Yugo Hano materialized once more.
He fell to his knees on the corrugated iron, taking a deep breath. The spectral cold left his veins, giving way to the comforting warmth of demonic blood. He adjusted his glasses.
The headache was gone. The constant, malicious whisper in his subconscious had fallen silent. Zs'Skayr was full, asleep, and docile inside the Omnitrix. The deal was working.
Yugo stood up slowly, brushing the dust off his pants. He looked one last time at the city throbbing to the rhythm of cumbia and chaos, allowing young Jose to bid farewell to his culture once more.
"It's not my country..." he murmured in Spanish, a small, nostalgic smile curving his lips. "But it served its purpose. God have mercy on them, because I didn't."
With a quick turn of the dial and a tap on the core, the emerald flash shone once more. Jetray shot off into the clouds, leaving a dismantled billboard behind and heading for Japan.
He had a convenience store to open, a three-headed dog to feed, and a new life to protect in Kuoh. He'd finished hunting. It was time to go home.