Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Capricious Infection ❯ Act 38: In The Death Factory ( Chapter 38 )

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Capricious Infection

Act 38: In The Death Factory

By: Melissa Norvell

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Lannad hugged the figure and wept softly. "I feel like a fool," her tears ran off of the figure's tanned skin and flowed down to the front of her lolita dress. They sunk through her clothes and dampened her chest and breasts.

Tony held the crying girl and ran his fingers through what he could of her tied up hair. His voice was gentle and caressed her ears. "I'm sorry. I don't know why he'd turn down a pretty girl like you." Honestly, any man would be lucky to have someone like her and Dante just threw her out like yesterday's garbage.

"I'm not really all that pretty," Lannad admitted, her voice muffled as she wiped her eyes.

"Sure you are," Tony reassured the girl. "You just don't want to admit it because you feel bad about being rejected. I don't think being rejected is a bad thing. It just means that you haven't found the best person to treat you like you want to be treated." Dante just wasn't the soul mate she was looking for. It didn't mean that she was any less beautiful, not in his eyes. To him, Lannad was stunning, from the way that her silky, sky blue hair shone in the sun to the how delicate the clothes were that she wore. The priestess was like a living doll. She was special in every way.

"It's because Dante is a Dius now that I can't be with him. Maybe the old Dante would have considered it. He just...changed a lot," Lannad sniffled. She was sure that his changes were what held them back from each other. Dante had so much on his shoulders, so many relationships of the past coming out. She could only imagine what went on in his head. Maybe it was better if she never would have tried at all.

"David too, and Rezzi, a whole lot," Tony thought about everyone. They used to be a bunch of kids, fooling around without a care in the world, immersed in the world of high fashion, dates and gaming. Now, they were all strangers and hardly knew each other anymore. "They act a whole lot more mature and they have this presence about them that makes them seem larger than life. It makes someone like me feel really small."

Pulling away a little, the blue-haired girl toyed with her large, open sleeves and looked at her hands. "I've felt like I was behind since the Messiah because a true vision in everyone's eyes. I wonder though, if I am just feeling behind because I'm holding myself back, but in truth, my visions scare me. Everything I predicted came true," Lannad felt as if she uttered a single thing that it would be doomed to come to pass. She was like a bad omen walking.

"Well, you can look at it this way, it can't get any worse. Well, it can but you know what I'm talking about," Tony wasn't very good at cheering her up at all.

"Maybe I should open up about my predictions. It might be better if I did, even if they're wrong." It only hurt her to keep them in, and at the moment, her pain couldn't be any worse.

"You can always make yourself stronger," Tony pulled back and sat his hands on either of her shoulders. "No time like the present, right? Everyone goes at their own pace, and we just do our thing. When we do what's best, that's when we shine the brightest. I haven't seen that glow from you, Lannad."

"You really think...I can glow?" She looked up to him with large, soulful eyes. It was nice to hear that someone actually believed in her.

Tony nodded, "sure you can."

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Tarvos flew up with an arm wrapped around his stratos. "He's training right down there. I can pick him off easily." The reaper gestured down to the area where Dante was, swinging his kusarigama around. The human-Dius hybrid was hard at work, training as much as he could and working up a sweat.

"Well, take care of him then. Just don't kill him or I'll fuck you up." That was a promise Ares intended on making.

Reaching behind him, Tarvos grabbed his scythe and flung it at the boy on the ground. The weapon spiraled in the air, tumbling end over end. It came flying at Dante with such speed that when the boy turned to acknowledge it, it struck him in the head. A loud smack was heard as Dante's eyes rolled back in his head. Releasing his weapon, the boy fell to the ground in a crumpled heap.

"Sorry, Dante, but I go wherever death takes me." Holding out his hand, a purple vortex swirled and sucked the grass below Dante into it. The purple and black colors swirled around and the unconscious boy was sucked into it, drug to the depths of something truly sinister.

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Dante laid on a cold, hard surface with his eyes closed. Groggily, he stirred awake; his vision swam before him in a haze before it cleared up. The smell of decay filled his senses as he sat up, glancing around as the rhythm of machines pounding and releasing steam, fluids and the turning of gears filled his pointed ears. Down below him, the floor was black and made of something that resembled cast iron.

"What is this place? It smells disgusting." Slowly standing up, the Dius noticed a sea of rainbow-colored fluids around him, flowing through ducts. There was a set path for each different color. The smell of copper was strong, almost overpowering. "What the fuck is this? I don't understand any of this shit. Where is everyone at? This had better not be a fucking cruel trick by Tarvos." Clenching his fist, the boy was filled with anger at the very thought of such a thing happening. Jagged teeth gritted against each other. "I will beat his ass so hard that both he and Oz will feel it. Hell, I'll his him so hard I'll knock him back into Oz's body and recombine both of them."

He walked around the metal island that he was on, surrounded in rivers of colors. Pacing around, he glanced at the machines that the colors flowed from. They looked like giant vats that released the colors in steady pumps, causing an even flow. It sickened him for some reason. It was eerie and disturbing. "I'm fucking trapped here...Unless I want to jump into that shit...and who knows what it is. What the fucking fuck? I don't have time for this."

"You're awake...Dante." A sinister, yet familiar voice welcomed him, causing the boy to turn around. His eyes darted everywhere trying to find the male in the darkness of the room.

"What?" Just then, his foot slipped and he felt himself lose balance as he tumbled into the blood and ichor. The flow swept him down a river of deep red. Dante's head went under a few times and he spit the substance out only then to realize what exactly it was.

"It's blood. What the fuck is this?" Horrified, he looked at his hands as he latched onto the side of one of the edges of metal and hoisted himself up. The blood dripped from his body and onto the metal as he attempted to rid himself of the red substance. The excess blood splattered onto the surface with a wet noise and it gushed in the crevices of his shoes.

When he was done, he turned around to see Ares, adorned in his cape. The Warrior King's face was covered in the shadows. Ares was standing there before him as he uttered his name. The Dius stood tall and proud with his arms crossed and a wicked grin plastered on his face.

"Such a pathetic bastard," Ares remarked. "Did I not tell you that you would pay for your sins?"

"What in the fuck is this place? What sort of sick operation are you running?" Did anyone know that this guy had rivers of blood flowing through whatever place they were in? In fact, did anyone know that he had been kidnapped by him? Dante was sick of whatever mind tactics the warrior king was pulling on him.

"This is...my death factory," Ares introduced him to his realm.

"You're a sick fuck!" Dante shouted angrily. "How dare you! Is this what you do to the dead? You harvest them like a fucking crop? You're nothing but a lowly scavenger!"

"Big words coming from someone who continually bites their own neck. You should have never crawled out of the Null Zone." Now that he did, Ares was going to make sure that he paid for all of the punishment that he was delivered.

Dante narrowed his eyes and took a defensive stance. He was ready to kick this guy's ass at a moment's notice. "What do you plan on doing?"

"I wanted to end your life here, but my stratos wouldn't like me very much if I did that," Ares sneered. "Be lucky that I have a heart."

"You make me sick," Dante spat. Ares was just a delusional, insane, sadistic fuck who wanted to see him suffer over something that happened years ago that he couldn't let go. This was beyond unfair that he had to suffer for something Diablo did.

"You don't deserve a second life. You have smeared my name. You're the reason I live in exile. The reason that I bear the mark of the Karka Clan with shame. The reason that my blood color has become an abomination is because of you," Ares pointed to the shameful boy before him. It was about time he felt the pain that the Warrior King had all those years.

"When will you get it through your fucking skull that I am not Diablo? Yes, we combined, but I'm still part human. We've made a new person." Ares might not have liked that, but it was the only defense Dante had at the moment.

"If you choose to accept the fact that you harbor Diablo and use his powers then you should bear his burdens, whether you want to or not. To use the blessing you must bear the curse." No way was this boy going to get away with gaining something from a man that didn't deserve to live a life like his. If Dante choose to bear the horror that was the Dius of Chaos, then he was going to suffer. It didn't matter what part of Diablo he held within him, Ares was going to make sure he suffered.

"What? Do you want me to just kick Diablo out of my body? Just go, fuck you, Diablo, I don't need you anymore? Don't you think I want that? I hate living like this, but there's not shit I can do to stop it. Why the hell can't you reconcile with me?" Did Ares even know how utterly idiotic he sounded? Didn't he know how outrageous his demands were? This was ridiculous.

"You have no memories of me, but you harbor those feelings for me. Your jealousy and hatred reign supreme." If there was something that Dante inherited from his other half, it was that.

"If you want to kill me, fine but at least tell me what the fuck I did to you!" Dante really didn't understand what this guy's malfunction was with him.

Ares walked up to him, leaning down as he pulled the hood from his head. "You don't remember me?"

"No, I don't you stupid fu-" Dante was cut off as Ares sat his hands on his shoulders and leaned in, giving the Dius-human hybrid a deep, passionate kiss. Dante's eyes widened at the gesture, feeling the other male's tongue darting in and out of his mouth as he made a muffled noise against his lips. 'Why...does this feel so familiar?' After a few moments, Dante gave in and kissed him back a little unsurely. Just as he was feeling settled with the feeling, clawed hands were sat on his chest as he was violently shoved back.

Dante stumbled backwards as he coughed. He nearly fell back into the blood again. Waving his arms around frantically, he kept himself from going back into the red river once more. Huffing, he leaned forward and glared at the Warrior King. "What the fuck?"

"I just wanted to taste you, one last time." Those words were darker than Dante wanted them to sound.

"You're a fucking psycho bastard!" Dante yelled through the fog of the kiss. He had to admit that Ares was talented, but the better half of him would live in that denial.

"You called me your pyrex. You vowed to create the perfect warrior with me, but you deceived me and made me commit treason against my own kind and destroy the peace treaty that we were going to make with the Diodes," Ares explained and reached over his shoulder, throwing off his cape. The long, white, tattered piece of cloth flopped to the ground as he revealed his bicep, marked with the crest of the Karka Clan. "This is my brand of treason."

"The Cancer sign? You're a Cancer?" Dante was unsure of what exactly it meant, but he knew for sure that mark was that of the Cancer symbol.

"All of my clan are the Cancer born Dius. We are called Karka. To bear my merciful master's name as a symbol of shame makes me an outcast in my own clan. I am no longer considered a Divine One." Because of Diablo, that was his cursed fate. That was the reason that he lived in exile.

"Well, I don't get that or your clan." It was all gibberish to Dante, and to be honest he didn't really care much.

"Because of your deception, I was publically humiliated, beaten within an inch of my life and my clan was discriminated against and killed needlessly. Those who are Karka had to hide from all of Dius society. The Diode race, which we were at war with, retracted their peace treaty and sent us into another, greater, war. The Diodes brought other races here and our allies turned on us. We were nearly driven into extinction, and you blew up the planet of Scales and Balances, wiping everyone from it," Ares' words were powerful. The horror that Diablo caused to his race and to him was immeasurable, and the decades of suffering the eventual extinction of his race felt like crushing blows, one after another, guilt after guilt was piled on him until he couldn't move anymore.

All he could do was speak Ares' name in a soft tone.

"Don't look so concerned now. I don't want your pity, and I won't put up with your bullshit. You destroyed my life as a Karka and Divine One." What was Dante trying to do? Mock him? He wasn't sorry for what he had done! He wasn't sorry at all!

"Karkatta...She's..." It just hit Dante where exactly the Dius of misery got her name from.

"A Karka? Yes."

"What...In the hell did I do? Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. Oh god," Dante repeated that phrase over and over as he felt an anxiety coarse through his veins. What happened? What did he do? This was bad. This was really bad.

"I told you that you'd pay for your sins. So, suffer in my death factory," Ares' voice was ominous and foreshadowing.

"What? What is this place for? What will happen to me?" Dante was worried. He was worried like hell.

Ares explained to him that to build a war ship was the ultimate privilege. The tale of a battle ship wasn't quite so nice, but they weren't so complex when one got to know them. He built them with the help of a machine he called the Dius Device.

Holds out his arms to either side, a piercing yellow light cut through the darkness in the form of a Cancer symbol, located on a large, wide machine that stretched across the ship's confines. It was composed of a series of hydraulic presses that slammed down on a conveyer belt below. It was used to make the pounding noises he heard that he heard when he first stirred awake. Occasionally, the machine would release a burst of air pressure that flowed through a pipe and spit blood into large, round, glass vats suspended in the air. The vats streamed out the blood into canals below.

The Warrior King continued to tell him how it was easy to misjudge his facility. It had a foreboding appearance and great social psychology that one would never even begin to understand. Countless galaxies have tried to gain his knowledge of advanced warship creation and no one could figure out his superior technology.

"With all great things come a great responsibility. A battle's victory is the achievement of the death facility," Tarvos added, perched on top of the mainframe of the great machine. Dante gazed up at the reaper who sat on the corner of the one unmoving, central part of the machine. With one leg crossed over the other his lazy eyes peered down on the boy, who uttered his name in shock.

"In the death factory...where your darkest nightmares come true and not a single soul gets through," Tarvos' voice sounded darker than usual. It held an ominous tone to it that promised to deliver the element he stood for.

"Tarvos, what are you doing? Get me out of here, please," Dante was tired of staying in that hellish place. It wasn't funny anymore.

"That won't be happening," Tarvos regretted to inform him, but things weren't going to go his way.

"What? Not you, too." So, that's what this was about.

"I'm not here as your savior, I'm here to do my job." This was doing just that. That was what Tarvos would tell himself, anyway.

"Tarvos helps me run the death factory," Ares informed him that the reaper was indeed doing his job. It was his purpose to provide his factory with blood.

"No...No...Oh god..."

"I'm here to show you the tour," Tarvos' smile widened displaying all of his sharp, hellish teeth.

It was then that Dante realized the disparity of his situation. Tears bit at the corners of his eyes, threatening to fall. "I'm going to fucking die..." There was no getting out of it. In the death factory, no one could hear him scream. Soon, it was going to be his blood that flowed through those vats and into the canals. In those moments, he regretted ever being combined with Diablo again. In those moments, he hated Diablo as much as Ares did.

The reaper flew down to the boy, who took a couple of steps back as the shadow descended upon him. As Dante was backing up, his foot slipped and the boy fell into a canal of purple blood. Struggling to keep his head above the foul service, his wrist was grabbed and Dante was pulled back onto the hard surface of what he assumed to be "land".

Just great, now he was covered in thicker, warm blood that came from god knew what race of alien.

Dante stared into the reaper's visage with a horrified expression. He was desperate to get him to listen to him. "Tell him...Tell him I'm not Diablo...Tarvos!" The boy begged the winged Dius to talk some sense into his stratos. If Tarvos didn't explain to Ares that his revenge was pointless and that he should let go of things that happened a million years ago, then he was certain that he was going to die.

He couldn't understand why Tarvos was against him. Weren't they at least on good terms before? Sure, he denied Tarvos' feelings but back then he wasn't sure of how he felt about anyone, and back then he was convinced that he didn't love another man. Did Tarvos know about David and what happened between them? If he did...then he probably had every right to be angry with him.

Did they really get together just to kill him? He felt sick to his stomach, like he was free falling through the air.

That gnarly smile was wider than ever as Tarvos spoke to him with sinister intentions embedded into his voice. "There are things you should learn about death, Dante."

"Why would you do this? Why would you help him?" Dante wanted to know what was going on more than anything.

"Death shows no partiality," Tarvos explained. "As co-operator of this factory, I'm here to take you on a mother fucking tour." The winged Dius grabbed him suddenly, taking off into the air as he dropped him into what looked like a holding pen of different races.

The structure was a room, surrounded by iron-barred walls and it was full of different alien races. There were a few humans in the pen as well. Looking all around him, the smell of blood and rotting flesh filled his senses. He was surrounded by old, wounded and dead members of other races. It was horrifying to be there in a pit of death and Dante knew what all of these people were sent here for. This was where aliens were sent to die. He could read it in their eyes as they watched the machines with sorrowful expressions, and if the boy wasn't so worried about what was about to happen to him, he would have felt sorry for him. The sounds of pain and weeping filled his senses as he took in the pit of death.

Tears ran down his cheeks, no longer able to be held back. "I trusted you and looked to you for guidance on letting me find my memories. I didn't want to believe anyone could be that cruel." It hurt, more than most anything had. To know that Tarvos betrayed him for the sake of his stratos was painful. More than anything, Dante trusted him. He even liked him more than he let on.

Maybe he should have told him that, instead of acting like a tough guy and shoving him away. Maybe he should have been nicer to him, knowing what he was capable of.

"If you understood my job, then you'd know why I'm going this," Tarvos' voice then held amusement to it. "Don't look so hurt. It's simply your time to be judged. This was destined to be."

Ares spoke, telling him that he would now see the elite system of Social Darwinism at its finest, the very foundation of the world, new and old. Only the strongest and more superior species would flourish in the said new world. The weak and unfit should perish and rid society of its defects. In order to do this, he placed Dante in a cell of failure. The beings that he saw before him were the weak, dying and dead. The poor, unfortunate souls whose breeding permitted their defects. However, they would be repurposed and made to serve a higher purpose.

"What is going on here?" Dante's voice became angrier as the situation grew worse.

"Do you desire to see it? The great creation of my superior technology? Do you want to behold a sight no other can lay their eyes on? It's a very special privilege," Ares was proud of his facility and lived to the highest expectations of his own principals. This was the chance of a life time, a chance only he would be able to see and live to tell the tale about.

"You're crazy!" Dante yelled as he rushed up to the barred walls, sticking his head between the bars as he yelled at the Warrior King. "Your Social Darwinism is absurd! You try to raise yourself up to the title of a god? Look at all of these people!" He held his arms out to the decrepit bodies around him. "You could be helping them, making them stronger and using your powers to heal them."

"Absurd, do not speak out of position," steely eyes glared down at the boy like a lowly piece of meat.

"Instead, you cage them up like animals and use them to support your radical theory." It was wrong and cruel! This guy was just as bad as Hitler, or any of the Nazi that thought they could get away with a similar system during the period of the Holocaust. What Ares was doing was madness.

Someone needed to stop him.

"The very radical theory that you're supporting is the very one that Oz is defining this planet's infrastructure on." Dante wasn't going to get away from it, it was a belief that all of the Dius encompassed.

"How is that so? He's sparing these children," Ares was wrong. He just knew he was.

"Oh, what good graces!" Ares mocked happiness before his voice turned cut-throat, "blithering fool!"

"This isn't a factory, this is a concentration camp," Dante was sickened by the very existence of that place. It needed to be bombed and dismantled for good so it could never hurt or kill anyone again.

Ares defended himself by saying that all of his methods had a purpose. Nothing was done without waste. This was merely a process of natural selection. If they were to build a race then they would make them a breed of the highest caliber. They would not allow others to take this world from them, not after fighting so passionately to make it inhabitable.

Dante posed his side of the story, telling the deranged Dius his views. Ares' religion would be his fatal end. He was just a fucking Social Darwinist. They had already had Social Darwinism on their planet before, and it didn't work. It wouldn't work in the future, either. Ever. His system was based on a faulty assumption of what he believed to be morally correct. There was no natural selection about it. Ares thought that because something happened it's a moral paradigm for everyone to follow. Just because those people got hurt or list the war didn't mean that they were meant to be weak or even that they were weak in general. Ares' eugenics philosophy was botched beyond repair.

Ares objected. "Allow me to show you how, when implemented correctly, Social Darwinism is not an outdated theory, but a revolution of the future of this planet and its technology." This would be the perfect opportunity to make Dante appreciate his methods and his precious death factory first hand.

"Huh?" Dante pulled away from the bars and looked up to see a large machine above him. Quickly, it dove down and clamped metal shackles around his wrists and ankles. An iron collar clamped around his neck as he desperately tried to struggled against his bonds, thrashing around. The shackles straightened him and pinned him to a wooden cross.

The boy could feel sweat pull down his back as he continued to thrash around. The abrasive wood of the cross bumped against his back, scraping against his flesh as he was hoisted up into the air, far above the containment pen. The people that were enclosed by the bars looked like action figured from the height. Dante could see just how expansive the entire site was, and just how large the Dius Device truly was.

"Now, observe the power of my mighty death factory!"

...To Be Continued