A blow to the temple, step back and evade, the opponent stepped a bit too close, overcompensation, punish the opponent by shifting leg to destroy their balance, end them by grabbing wrist and throat, spinning them around while pinning to the floor.

“I give, I give!” the pleas of his opponent reminded Viktor that he was not fighting his usual sparring partner… no, that person would have won seven times out of ten, if only because Viktor had memorized their fighting styles, and had grown up with that person.

“Be careful next time Kevin, you extended too far there; it made it easy for me to destroy your balance. If you had simply waited to counter, it would be better.” Viktor did not fight like his sparring partner, something that annoyed said person every time they fought.

Jaeger, the Hunter, a near legendary figure within Tartarus, and the third generation Hunter, the first being his grandfather, and the second being his father.

The Hunters had been a reaction, a natural one according to Viktor, to the plague that was the Chained.

When Tartarus first opened, and all the prisoners around the world were being brought there, some had gotten ‘lost’ during the process.

They would appear later as the first generation of Chained, with abilities out of comic books or myth, and considering they were all criminals…

To say might makes right was their thoughts would be an understatement. And normal humans were much weaker than even the weakest Chained, so of course they were oppressed.

It was during this chaotic period that some of the more powerful gangs had disappeared in fact, most South American gangs, a few smaller time Japanese and European ones, and some surprisingly competent group calling themselves the ‘Numbers’… the last group was surprisingly dangerous for people with such uh… lack of decorum.

Anyway, many people were destroyed by Chained who held their powers over others, and those gangs were those who would not bow… and then the first Hunter appeared, using firearms.

Guns were not brought into Tartarus. There were airdrops, and other delivery systems do bring in drugs, food, cars, computers, cell-phones, just about everything, as long as it was out-dated bar the food and drugs.

But guns were not allowed, for the creators of Tartarus predicted that guns would tip the balances of power too easily in Tartarus.

An assassin with a gun could kill quite a few influential people before they themselves would die or get caught, even an ordinary man could kill the president of some major country with a gun as long as they aimed right and were in position to do so.

So with that in mind, guns were disallowed in Tartarus, something that brought mixed responses from the people inside, most disliking that, while a few others felt it right.

Guns did exist in Tartarus though. They were made by the first Hunter, really old guns called flint-locks, but the only reason they weren’t more modern was because the first Hunter was an antique gun enthusiast.

He was a soldier, so he knew modern guns and how their parts looked but he couldn’t make them… older guns, he could.

So using these guns that only had one shot before needing a reload, as well as a few other tools and tricks, the first Hunter killed many Chained who dared lord their power over the normal man, proving once more that humanity was scary.

Oh maybe the whole weren’t special, but at times there were a select few humans who were a cut above the rest, the talented of humanity.

Of course, man was mortal, and so was the first Hunter, killed as he was by Baal, a powerful Mechanical Chained with the ability to use electricity, the first hunter was apparently electrocuted to death.

Some feared what would occur after that, would the Chained become violent once more after the first Hunter and his fifteen year period of protection?

No, they wouldn’t… because the Hunter ‘lived’. Of course he was actually dead, but he had a son, a son who continued his teachings. This was the second Hunter, the son of the first.

The second would continue his father’s goals, and eventually get a son of his own. He would raise his son harshly, informing his son every day that he was only a replacement for when the second would eventually die in battle.

This son was Jaeger, the third Hunter, who replaced his father after his father was killed by Leviathan, a massive beast of a Biological Chained who controlled blood.

“Thanks for the advice boss… is-is the Hunter really busy here?” Viktor sighed at Kevin’s awestruck voice, knowing that fans like the sixteen year old boy actually made up the bulk of their group, the Eyes of the Hunter.

“Yes. He encountered a powerful Chained, and is designing a weapon to combat the Chained. He isn’t to be disturbed.” Viktor had given up long ago when it came to stopping the awestruck members of his group from going into fan mode over Jaeger…

Really, Jaeger was a normal guy just like Viktor or Kevin, the only difference Viktor found was that Jaeger had certain… something’s that made him special.

It didn’t come out in casual conversation or how he lived his life though, so Viktor considered Jaeger a normal guy… up until a fight occurred, or Jaeger got to building things.

Jaeger, his father, and his father before him had all claimed the same thing, and Viktor had believed in the saying of their family wholeheartedly.

Quod mens sit maxime omnium armis.

The mind is the greatest of all weapons.

Viktor was aware that was the truth. The Hunters, despite their physical abilities, were all weaker than their opponents, and won through ingenuity and tools built by them.

Jaeger for instance, had a keen mind when it came to fighting, weak points, and he was beginning to use his skills at engineering to create weapons to equalize the playing field.

His grandfather had used flint-lock pistols. He had been killed by Baal. His father then designed the body armour Jaeger wore underneath his clothes; the armour itself was made from thin interlocking leather, with a layer of rubber in-between the layers creating electrical insulation.

It would burn and hurt, but shock attacks wouldn’t kill a Hunter again, just injure them. Then Jaeger’s father died against Leviathan due to being incapable of harming the beast.

In the end, Jaeger only found this out recently, but after finding out he was now working on a better rifle than what he had currently, hoping to upgrade to armour piercing rounds in case he fought another Chained like that.

The Hunters, Jaeger included, were people who learned not only from their own mistakes, but the mistakes of the past. It was why, despite being physically weaker than the previous Hunters, Jaeger had more Chained kills than his predecessors.

Of course, there were downsides to this kind of thought process… a downside Viktor was looking at as he walked into the back of the warehouse, finding Jaeger staring at a battery with bloodshot eyes, said eyes twitching due to a lack of sleep.

Jaeger had focus, he had discipline… he also gained a sort of insomnia when exposed to things that interested him a bit too much for too long.

“Jaeger.” Viktor’s voice came over the silence in the workshop, and considering Jaeger just groaned like a zombie in return, Viktor took that as a sign that Jaeger needed some sleep.

“Jaeger, haven’t you been up for the past three nights straight? And you only got two hours sleep… and before that you were up five nights. This has to stop.” Viktor was practically Jaeger’s nanny/nurse… a job he actually found himself accepting.

Jaeger was a genius, maybe not of the scientific kind, with mathematics and that, but he was his own brand of genius, but he sometimes couldn’t even take care of himself.

Viktor was fine being that person to take care of Jaeger, Jaeger was necessary for the normal people of Tartarus, a symbol that normal humans were not to be looked down upon…

So what if behind that symbol was an insomniac who needed an entire ‘gang’ to keep him going? That was for Viktor and a few other higher up members to know, and no one else needed that information.

“Almost done… I’m almost done… I’ve got the designs… got the plan… needs smaller… powerful… battery…” Jaeger mumbled and Viktor rolled his eyes, even if he knew what Jaeger was building.

Jaeger was making a stun-baton, but with a very unique form of ‘stun’. To be more precise, he wanted to make a stun-baton that shut down electronics he hit with it.

Viktor was surprised by the idea, not having considered it, and in hindsight wishing he had.

The idea of being able to shut down electronics with a hit would make Jaeger a dangerous enemy to any Mechanical-Chained even if the baton didn’t work as well on them.

Strange then, that this baton was being designed for use against a Biological Chained… but then again, Typhon was a strange one.

Typhon, Greek King of Monsters… it was confusing to Viktor, matching the image of that man with glasses to the child-like Typhon that existed now…

It wasn’t openly discussed, and it was rare that it ever happened, but Chained could ‘return’ in a manner of speaking. For instance, Pegasus, who Jaeger had killed about a year or so ago, was most certainly dead, but someone could replace him as a new Pegasus, with the same knowledge of hover-tech.

Not to mention that when a Chained had a child, and this was an even rarer occurrence, the child would possess the same abilities as one or even both of his parents, if both were Chained.

The latter had only occurred once, and that child had been dubbed Original Sin, or just Origin for short, the daughter of Pride and Lust of the Seven Deadly Sins group the first Hunter was famed for tracking down and killing.

Origin had practically vanished, so not much was known other than the fact that the child could both generate and manipulate bone, and that she was capable of slight biological manipulation, which combined resulted in something very scary…

It resulted in Origin, someone capable of touching another human being, and then destroying them or fixing them at their whim.

As far as naming went, Viktor highly doubted Origin was the name of that particular existence, but it was the only one mentioned in rumours so it was used.

And as for the other option, a child born of a Chained and a normal human would result in that child having the powers of the Chained, a sort of ‘junior’ to the parent. If the parent died, the child would just end up taking the name anyway, so in these cases, most Chained parents just named the child after themselves.

For instance, Typhon and Typhon, two different people, yet their powers were the same… not exactly the same though, Viktor noted…

After all, the Typhon he knew, the one that wore those old fashioned glasses, he didn’t use that black sand called Nano-bots to fight…

No, he had used blades. The blades themselves were collapsible and he had worn a coat at all times to hide them, but the blades were attached to string and floated at his whim.

The original Typhon was dangerous in his own way, but he wasn’t much of a fighter, even if he could when using those string blades of his.

But beyond that, their powers should be the same; why else would they both be named the same?

The original Typhon had been a wanderer who had hidden his name from Jaeger’s father, and only in their last meeting had he revealed his real name.

That meeting was sixteen years ago, with Typhon looking oddly worried as he told Jaeger’s father the truth. He then left, never to be seen again…

“Viktor… you complain about me… but you’re drifting off too.” Viktor blinked, snapping out of his memory of the kind man in glasses who patted his hair as he sighed, nodding to Jaeger.

“Sorry… just thinking about Typhon… the original.” Viktor admitted, and Jaeger actually paused in what he was doing, before spinning around to look at Viktor…

Somehow he managed to make one of those roller chairs look serious, how, Viktor did not know.

“Uncle Tai? Huh… I… I haven’t thought about him in a while… funny enough…” Jaeger actually looked a bit embarrassed at that as Viktor chuckled at his friend scratching his beard, light, but clearly there.

“That is ironic, considering who you’re making this weapon to fight against.” Viktor said as Jaeger chuckled, looking back to his ‘blueprints’… honestly, they were just a mass of scribbles to anyone other than him, Viktor couldn’t understand any of it.

“Yeah… Uncle Tai did say his kid would argue with me, and what happened? We ended up fighting… guess that saying of old men seeing the future would be kind of true, huh?” Jaeger asked as he leaned back into his chair, looking to reach over to the table to get coffee, before deciding against it.

“What does that make us then? We aren’t as old as to be called old men yet are we?” Viktor jested, knowing that Jaeger was just over thirty, and he would reach that age in a year, they were approaching the end of their prime combat wise which was a surprise for Jaeger, who expected to die young.

“…Viktor, we are getting old… at least, I am… I feel too old…” Jaeger sighed, reaching across the table for a wooden frame as Viktor narrowed his eyes in a bout of sadness…

“Viktor... where is he? Where is my son?” Jaeger looked to the picture, sadness in his heart and Viktor felt for his friend, he truly did…

Jaeger had found himself a girl, and they had tried for a kid… for quite a while. Once they finally had one, it was at the expense of the wife, to Jaeger’s grief.

He hadn’t let grief stop him from taking care of his son, Chase, a name Viktor had joked about with his friend for a while, knowing that were Chase to become a Hunter that would be a bit of a funny twist, after all, the Hunter ‘chases’ down his prey doesn’t he?

It was even funnier when one considered that the strange naming convention started with the first Hunter. His name was literally Hunter. He then named his son, Jaeger’s father, Venandi, which was Latin for Hunter.

And then Jaeger found out from Typhon, the son of the original, that his name meant Hunter in German… of course, once he found out his father’s strange name also meant Hunter, he figured it was just a bit of stupidity from his grandfather which somehow held out until today.

But then one day Jaeger had been given a report of a Chained named Vassago going on a killing spree around Area one and he had left to go take out the vampire-like Chained.

When he had returned, it was to find Viktor heavily injured, and Chase gone. His only clue as to who it could have been was that when Viktor awoke, he claimed it was a woman, the only features he could remember of the woman was that she attacked with what could almost be called physical light.

It was something Jaeger couldn’t comprehend, and neither could Viktor, but they understood it for what it was. Viktor was supposed to die, only surviving because when he got knocked out she didn’t bother checking his breathing. And Chase was gone, kidnapped by the Chained woman.

Other situations like that had occurred before, obviously. This was Tartarus, the world of crime. Every person in the place was either a criminal or born of one or the grandchild of one at this point…

But Jaeger also knew something some normal people in Tartarus didn’t, and that was the fact that Chained had to come from somewhere… normal people would rarely be kidnapped, taken to the walls, and re-emerge a Chained.

It was something ‘uncle Tai’ had told his father, so Jaeger remembered it… and figured that Chase had been chosen to become a Chained, at the young age of two. That had been twelve years ago…

“Jaeger… I don’t want to let you get your hopes up… I also don’t want your hope to die…” Viktor was uncertain what to tell his friend at this point.

If Chase was alive, he would now be a Chained, not to mention Chase would have little to no memory of his father… on the other hand, if Chase was dead…

“He might be alive, he might be a Chained… he might not remember you, but if he’s alive, that’s something right?” Viktor asked as Jaeger bit his lip, wanting to scream, throw something or better yet kill something… Jaeger found himself with no energy to do so.

It was a good thing they had this conversation while he was suffering from a lack of sleep… had he been fully rested this might have devolved into an animalistic sparring match.

“That… it is good.” Jaeger was angry, he definitely was, and Viktor didn’t blame him, being told that your son was either dead or didn’t know you at all and was experimented on was something harsh.

But at the same time, getting angry wouldn’t solve anything and Jaeger knew that as he was, tired and dizzy, Viktor could beat him in a fight.

Viktor was no slouch after all, in fact, as far as Jaeger knew, Viktor was the next most likely person to be able to kill a Chained while being a normal person.

“Jaeger, why are you fighting the Chained?” Viktor asked after a moment, finally figuring out what was the cause of that sense of incongruence when it came to Jaeger…

Jaeger, for a few years actually, had been going ‘soft’ as it were, on his enemies although over the course of the fight he would ramp up to his full ability.

The reason, Viktor now found, was that Jaeger wasn’t truly trying against his enemies, the Chained… either that, or he was questioning the need to kill them.

“I… I don’t know anymore, honestly. It’s what I know, so I stick to it… even though not all Chained are bad, like Cyclops I know isn’t really bad, despite his alcoholism.” Jaeger added with a stray thought to the ‘one eyed’ Chained…

Cyclops didn’t drink anymore, last he checked. It was a surprise to everyone, and it was apparently only possible with the help of Aaron and Typhon’s sister Echidna…

Queen of Monsters huh?

“So the question I’ve been asking myself is that, am I supposed to do this? Am I supposed to judge them and decide their fate when I’m a man with my own faults?” Jaeger asked as Viktor frowned, wondering what answer Jaeger had arrived at.

“I finally decided, during my last few months just doing some engineering. I can judge them. I can decide their fate.” Jaeger said, but something about it felt… hollow, brittle, to Viktor’s ears.

“I can judge them and decide their fate only because this is Tartarus, the world where might makes right. I can judge them because I am not one of them, much like they judge others.” Jaeger chuckled, and Viktor walked over to a nearby tap to get some water for the insomniac.

“Chained… normal humans… we’re the same. The only difference is that they’ve been through things we haven’t, things that hurt and changed them.” Jaeger noted, thinking back to how casually Aaron interacted with beings that could kill him.

“You know… Aaron, I think he got it… now there was someone that scared me.” Jaeger admitted, and Viktor agreed, even if he also respected the man… both of them did.

Aaron Hassan had no powers, no abilities, and yet led a group of Chained in what was possibly the greatest ‘fuck you’ to inequality in Tartarus.

Chained didn’t need to rule over normal humans, and normal humans didn’t need to be servants. People who were leaders did not need to rule through fear, but instead through compassion.

“…Hey… he was apparently taken by a group of Tartarus’ management… you don’t think he was being made into a Chained?” Viktor asked as Jaeger’s eyes widened for a moment before once more subconsciously narrowing due to his sleep deprivation.

“If he is… then I feel sorry for him. He seemed happy as he was, and being forcefully changed can’t feel good.” Jaeger took a sip of his water, and Viktor thought to the two examples of humanity that occurred with Jaeger and Aaron.

Jaeger was… a super-human, in a different sense from the Chained, he felt larger than life and people admired and followed him as if being lured to what he could bring with him.

As for Aaron, he had a similar feeling to him, but again, he was different from Jaeger.

Jaeger pulled other people into his orbit without trying, while Aaron looked at the people around him, and made them into something more.

Look at Empusa, she was a Lower-ranked Chained… then she was found by Aaron and Typhon, and months later she was now amongst the few High-ranked Chained, swiftly approaching the Top-ranked with her innovation to her seemingly boring skills.

Or Cyclops, who had been an alcoholic complaining about his competition with Pegasus. Aaron had helped him break his alcoholism with the help of Typhon’s sister, as well as giving him Pegasus’ knowledge about hover-tech.

Even Medusa, though Jaeger knew of her he knew very little beyond the fact that she had gone insane at some point two years ago, having begun to talk to herself and making everyone back away from her…

She had gotten better, but had vanished as well, apparently having joined the Assassin’s Guild.

Then Aaron got to her, and she was now amongst his most trusted, she was a staunch supporter of Aaron last Jaeger heard.

Aaron… Jaeger admired his method of leading people, of being a leader. Rather than shoulder all the responsibility, try to be something he’s not, he rather looked at the problems others had, and helped them solve said problems.

As a result of doing so, they’d follow him with loyalty, greater than they were before doing so.

“Jaeger… if Aaron is being turned into a Chained… and he would appear at some point once more… then he might have seen Chase.” Viktor reminded Jaeger, who widened his eyes, having enough state of mind to place his glass down as he looked to his friend.

“That… if he did… he could answer my questions! He could tell me what he knew if we found him…” Jaeger thought, and Viktor smiled, seeing the hope in his friend’s eyes return for a moment.

“So… will you be making a deal with him, like your old deal with Cyclops?” Viktor asked, wishing to know how Jaeger was planning on playing this move.

“No. I don’t need to. Aaron is a nice guy, remember I’ve met and spoke to him for a while, and I’m a really good judge of character.” Viktor felt that Jaeger’s words were an understatement, considering that he had killed every assassin that approached him easily, even if they tried to hide themselves in plain sight.

“Aaron would be willing to tell me what he knew as long as I asked. After all, telling me knowledge about Chase wouldn’t force him into a bad situation, and as long as the information wouldn’t hurt him or his friends, he’d freely give it.” Jaeger’s assumption wasn’t actually wrong, even if he didn’t know the reasoning behind it.

Aaron really would give any information like that for free, but it was only free from Jaeger’s point of view. To Aaron, it just meant that Jaeger would eventually trust him more and more, good will couldn’t be calculated, but it was a thing.

“So you’re still going to fight Typhon?” Viktor asked with a frown as Jaeger nodded with a grin on his face.

“Of course I am, we’re currently tied after all… and a Hunter doesn’t lose… it’s a matter of pride.” Oh if Jaeger only knew that he was so similar to Typhon when it came to that deadly sin.

“Well you aren’t going to win unless you up your game like he did his. You beat him with your base load out and he came out with that black panther like form.” Inside, Viktor felt a part of him die under the assault of copyright infringement, but hopefully no one would take offence due to the lack of Proper Noun usage.

“Yeah, that’s what this stun-baton is for… but I need to increase the energy…” Jaeger thought out loud, looking to his designs for the baton, and then looking to the battery… before his eyes landed on the glass of water.

“And you can only do that with larger batteries? Huh, if only smaller batteries could give enough power, even if it was just for a second.” Viktor sighed absently even as Jaeger raised a hand, stopping Viktor from continuing.

He looked to the water… then lifted the glass, and started swirling it slowly… then a bit faster, not caring that he was spilling the water onto the floor…

Then his eyes widened and he jumped from his chair, the glass shattering to the floor as he grabbed the nearby Viktor by his shoulders.

“I got it! What’s the word? Eureka!” Jaeger shouted in joy as Viktor blinked, confused on what just happened as Jaeger looked to the battery with a grin, then he picked it up and held it in front of Viktor as if to show the answer.

“This battery is enough, this and a few others, but it can work!” Viktor was heavily confused by his friend even as he palmed his friend’s face, pushing him back into his chair as his friend spun in a circle of joy.

“Okay, okay, how can you do what you want with that battery?” Viktor internally groaned, knowing that he now had to be Jaeger’s ‘soundboard’ for his solution so he could talk out the issues.

“Voltage spikes, if I change the current from a direct current flow to an alternating current it causes spikes in current and voltage, this makes tiny repeatable EMP’s happen around where the electricity flows!” Viktor seemed excited by what he just said, but Viktor honestly understood very little of it.

“Alright, alright, but doesn’t that cause a problem with timing your attacks?” Viktor knew very little about what Jaeger was talking about, his education was after all non-existent, it was a fact that people born in Tartarus tended towards practical knowledge rather than theoretical… unneeded skills were practically bred out at this point.

“No, because Alternating Current uses coils and magnets to practically spin the voltage around at high speeds, making an alternator is going to be annoying really, but with it, the voltage will spike at such high speeds it will practically do it constantly… of course, it will lower the damage the weapon can cause, but that’s fine.” Jaeger’s last bit made Viktor blink, finally catching up.

“So wait, the baton won’t do much damage?” Viktor was a bit caught on how odd that sounded, as stun-batons, from his understanding, knocked out normal people if they were hit with them.

“The baton originally did little damage; it was the electricity doing the damage.” Jaeger pointed out, causing Viktor to roll his eyes at his friend’s specifics.

“You know what I mean.” Viktor asked Jaeger to stop with his nonsense as Jaeger chuckled, reaching onto the table and pulling a regular stun-baton from it.

“Stun-batons use one million volts to shock a person into unconsciousness; two hundred million is required to kill someone. What I’m going to do is instead up the voltage to about ten million… then make it run throughout the entire baton instead of just the end.” Jaeger gestured to the end of the baton before continuing his explanation.

“Doing this would make it basically a static cloud, messing with electronics within a certain range… of course, if the batteries aren’t built right, it would eat through batteries and break them quickly, but that will take way too much time for me to complete.” Jaeger noted, and Viktor accepted that Jaeger would probably end up using a whole lot of batteries in his next fight with Typhon unless it was fine-tuned before then.

“But because the electricity is going into a static cloud instead of a concentrated point, it won’t do damage to anything other than electronics.” Jaeger sighed at that, knowing that the baton would now have to be a supportive weapon.

“Okay, so how long would it take you to build this thing? A few weeks?” Viktor asked, knowing that Jaeger took longer than necessary on his projects just to ensure they worked to perfection.

“Two months with fine tuning… still… it’s annoying. I last fought with Typhon nine months ago, the day before Aaron was taken. He fought me and beat me like three or so months after I beat him…” Jaeger frowned at the time difference as Viktor shrugged.

“Hey, remember he’s a Chained and you aren’t. They do what they do with less effort, and you require preparation. It’s your handicap, but if you win with it, it just proves you’re that much better.” Viktor helped comfort his friend as Jaeger sighed.

“I get it… annoying though… I spent six of those months on working on anti-material rifle rounds as well as building a prototype rifle, so I guess it did take me only three months to find my power up like he did.” Jaeger reminded himself that his time wasn’t spent focusing on just Typhon after all…

Typhon was a rival, someone he enjoyed fighting, not for any serious reason… but Leviathan?

Oh he wanted Leviathan to die… and once he figured it out to the best of his ability, he would kill Leviathan, who was now in human form.

A monster in human form had weaknesses just like a human after all…

“By the way, clean up that damn mess on the floor, am I your maid to have to clean your broken glass!” “Sorry Viktor, I’m sorry, don’t hurt me!”

…Well, everyone had fears; Jaeger’s was Viktor’s pissed off anger at his laziness.

Oh well, win some, lose some. Design an EMP-based stun-baton; get scolded out by your best friend, it happens…

Maybe?