Date: March 12, 2020 - 3:38 pm

Location: Colombo

On the balcony of a mansion facing the sun, three individuals were seated around a small round table, two men and one woman. The woman wore a pair of sunglasses and looked towards the sun, clearly ignoring the two men. Just as one of them was about to speak up, the woman suddenly tilted her head a bit and squeezed her upper arm and the balcony shook slightly. The two men looked at each other for a moment and waited to see if the shaking would come again. It did not, but as one of them was about to speak up again, the woman spoke first.

"Woah, looks like something is going on over there." The two men looked at each other again before getting up to see what she was looking at. They couldn't really make anything out unusual in the distance, but they thought they could hear something. "Sounds like a party is going on." The two men weren't sure about that. "Alright, let's see who's making all that noise in Madrazo territory."

The woman opened the door to leave the balcony and the two men followed. Inside the next room were a dozen men wearing casual clothes and armed with assault rifles. She went to the table to the room to arm herself with a pistol and her own assault rifle. Then, she picked up two other pistols and tossed them back to the men. "Here are your guns back. You know, you should really carry some more." The men holstered their respective pistols as the woman continued walking to the exit.

"Sierra, Alejandro and I didn't hear anything. We should really continue talking about what we came here to discuss."

"Not my fault the two of you are two old to hear anything properly."

"Sierra, please listen to me and Diego, even if there is something going on, it is minor at most. Our men can handle it while we keep the discussion going. Your father would want this of you as well."

"Yeah, not interested at all." She put on a vest to carry additional ammunition. "Let's go." About half of the armed men immediately followed suit. The rest glanced over at Alejandro and Diego. The two looked at each other again. They nodded and they all left together.

The fifteen of them got into four cars, with three of them following after Sierra. Just as they left the mansion gates, the sounds of commotion were unmistakable. It was some mix of fire, screaming and gunshots. Honestly, not that unusual of a sound throughout the city, but certainly strange for it to happen so close to the Madrazo estate.

They drove towards the epicentre of the noise and after travelling two blocks, they saw the back of a man firing a pistol into an alleyway. He was shouting out obscenities when he noticed the cars approaching him from the side. He called for help just as a bear-like monster lunged at him and forced him to the ground, tearing into his throat as it did. Sierra was the first to get out of the car. She immediately sprayed at the beast with her gun and it instantly slumped on top of the man as it fell dead. Then, it suddenly turned into quickly vanishing, black vapour.

"Stat points increased," Sierra muttered under her breath as the men gathered around her.

"What the hell was that?" Alejandro asked.

"A dungeon monster," she replied. Before a follow-up question could be asked, several more monsters came pouring out of the alleyway. Again, Sierra was the first to fire and she successfully downed another one of them before the rest opened fire. It was a one-sided massacre. They made short work of the monsters and Sierra casually made her way over to the dead man outside the alley. Inside the alley were the bodies of at least a dozen more men, some of their bodies on fire. She took a quick sniff and figured some Molotov cocktails were probably used. The carnage in this alley was more than expected, but still not that unusual. What was unusual though, was a glowing red portal that was there, about three feet off the ground. The portal was opaque, but looking around it, you could see more bodies and fires forming a trail on the end of the alley.

"What the hell is going on?" Diego asked this time. Sierra walked around the portal and listened closely. She readied her gun once more. Another monster suddenly appeared from the other end and she immediately fired at it. However, perhaps due to the distance, the monster suddenly jumped away, only taking a few shots. Sierra retrained her sights on it but the gun was out of ammo. Ah, she always was a bit too trigger happy. As she went to calmly change out the magazine, the monster let out a loud howl. As it did, the rest of the men filled it with bullets, which promptly clattered onto the ground when it turned into vapour like the rest.

"Sierra, our men are going to head back to the cars to get some more ammo and weapons. Do you want to come back, too?" Alejandro asked. Sierra looked at him with a bemused expression.

"I guess despite all your panicking earlier about these weird sights, as long as you know bullets work on them there's nothing to be worried about." Sierra spoke more akin to as if she were talking to herself than actually engaging in conversation.

"Right..."

"You all can go back," Sierra said, this time motioning towards them, "I will see what else is around here."

"Miss Madrazo, that's dangerous," one of the assault rifle men said.

"Then you all better hurry up and come back to support me," she said, as she made her way to the other end of the alley. Six of the men looked at each other and they quickly decided that three of them would follow after her while the other three restocked. They quickly went to the end of the alley they came in from, following Alejandro and Diego's men.

One of the assault rifle men took the lead from Sierra and quickly poked his head out. He signalled that the path was clear and they continued. The path was clear of all signs of life, but there was plenty of evidence left behind of a bloody struggle. They continued onwards, but just as they were about to reach the next branch in the path, Sierra suddenly ordered them to stop. She turned around, and then looked forward again.

"Let's go back," she said. Before they could make it back to their first alley, a swarm of monsters started pouring out of the red portal. Just as they started to open fire on them, another large group of monsters came in from the path they retreated from. Several of them let out louds howls as they charged at the four of them. "Thin out the ones coming from the portal; we'll take that path out." The men frantically gunned down the monsters coming out of the portal, but they all needed to reload. There were only three of them remaining in their way, so Sierra decided to advance with just her pistol. She fired a couple rounds into one of their faces, killing it. She continued to move forward while shooting at a second one. This one was more nimble and suddenly lunged at her, avoiding lethal shots. She dodged hard into a wall with unexpected speed, and fired a couple rounds into the side of its face as it slammed into the ground, barely missing her. The third came was not merely idling though, and was already upon her after the second one was downed. With another unexpectedly dexterous manoeuvre, she rolled to the side and fired another couple rounds into the monster's face as he turned around to face.

There was no time to celebrate. Just as the assault rifle men finished reloading, the monsters behind them had caught up. They unloaded their magazines into the ones in front of them, but only one of them could calmly aim at their heads while the other let out a frenzied spray. The monsters lunged forward and ripped into the chest of one of Sierra's men. Sierra killed the monster with a couple headshots but he was already bleeding heavily. The other panicking man's aim deteriorated even further when his ally fell and another monster instantly closed the distance to him. This time, though, Sierra dashed back towards them. Just as the monster was making contact with him, her pistol was making contact with its skull and she unloaded some more rounds in quick succession. Sierra grabbed the man's shoulder.

"Get back!" she yelled at him. He obeyed and backed off behind her. She then heard the final man's gun click. Out of ammo. In front of them was still at least another twenty of them. She unloaded the rest of her pistol's magazine, but that only killed two more of them, one of them with the assistance of the remainder of the panicked man's assault rifle. Instead of reloading, the other man picked up his dead ally's gun and continued shooting, also killing one more. There were still seventeen more to go, with only a few of them injured by stray bullets.

"Miss, please make your escape, we will block them as long as we can," the calm man said. The panicked man gripped his empty gun and grimly nodded.

"Yeah, not interested in that at all! Both of you, back the fuck away!" Sierra suddenly charged at the monsters with her empty pistol. Everyone, including even the monsters, looked surprised. She ran right up to one of them and suddenly smashed the butt of her pistol into its eye. There was a loud crack and black blood gushed out as the monster keeled over. "So, this is what 21 Strength can do," she said, also seemingly surprised by the outcome. The monsters turned towards her and started to surround her. Sierra continued to take the initiative and and smashed her pistol into another one's face, killing it in one blow. However, the recoil also damaged her pistol. She slammed into the skull of one more monster, result in mutual destruction. As if seizing a collective opportunity, three monsters lunged at her at once. She dodged two of them, but the third one slammed into her. It knocked her to the ground and tried to snap its jaws at her. She chopped its throat with enough force to cause it to gag and roll over. Then, she stomped on its head to kill it. The notice of even more stat points gained seemed to energize Sierra. At first, she was thinking she had gone crazy, but it looks like she really has been gaining superhuman levels of power.

Just as she was starting to think that she could really deal with the rest of them by herself, she heard the sound of gunfire cutting across the alley. Several bullets punched into the sides of a few of the monsters, but was far from incapacitating them. Just as she was wondering what was with the crappy fire support, she saw the bodies of her last two on the ground, blood oozing out from multiple gunshot wounds. At the end of the alley, she saw Alejandro, Diego, and their men. Only those eight. The rest of her three men were nowhere to be seen.

"Where the fuck are you aiming at?!" she yelled at them. Without a word, Alejandro motioned for his men to shoot again. They did, and this time, they aimed at Sierra. She tried to dodge at the last second, but the monsters restricted her movement, and several bullets struck her in the leg, back, and arm. Not missing its chance, one of the monsters pounced on top of her. "Alejandro, you son of a bitch!" Her bullet wounds were shallow and she still mustered the strength to bring out an arm from underneath the monster to choke its throat. Its strength started to fade and she pushed it off of her.

"Sierra, I am surprised by how well you can suddenly fight. You were always one to pick fights, but it wasn't like you were that amazing at fighting." Sierra turned around to face Alejandro and another monster attempted to tackle her. She punched it hard in the face, but the momentum from the charge still made it fall into her.

"Do you have any idea what it means to betray me?!"

"You speak as if you're the only one who has been wronged."

"Alejandro, let's just finish this. There's no need to mock her like this," said Diego.

"No, she needs to know." Sierra pushed the monster off of her and crushed its eye with her thumb. "Sierra, you don't know the first thing about leading. It was a mistake for your father to have designated you as his successor."

"Shut your fucking mouth! My grandfather and father built up the Madrazos! I am Sierra Madrazo!" she screamed out as smacked her fist into another monster's face. Immediately after, a monster swiped at her from behind, its claws slashing through her vest.

"That is indeed who you are. And if you had just simply wanted to live off of their legacy, it would have been fine. But you had to insist on taking over full control of the organization." Sierra jammed headbutted the monster who slashed at while jamming her thumbs into both of its eyes. "You are in love with violence! With you as the head, the fragile peace we have with the other families would break apart. And what about the police? You keep insisting on picking fights instead of using common business sense and sticking to our traditional cooperation."

"I don't think handing out bribes every week and letting them have their way with some of us..." Sierra kneed one of the monsters in the side, "is what we should do!"

"Alejandro," Diego pleaded with him again, "Just stop." Alejandro shook his head dismissively.

"There is no use in continuing on with this." Alejandro took out a Molotov cocktail and lit it. Everyone else did the same. They ran a few steps closer before throwing them into the crowd of monsters. The fur of the monsters caught fire, but surprisingly, seemed to only make them angrier instead of actually injuring them. As such, they paid them no attention and remained focused on Sierra alone. Alejandro and the rest of them left without doing anything else, perhaps to avoid doing anything more that might finally provoke the monsters to attack them instead of the closest target.

The monsters surrounded Sierra even tighter, and after beating another monster to death, the fire unsurprisingly spread to her clothes. Even as the flames began to burn at her flesh, even as the other monsters continued to bite and slash at her, opening new wounds, she continued to fight them to the death. In her persistent struggle, she brought it down to only three monsters. Also, due to her clothes having mostly burnt away, she was also no longer on fire, although there were numerous burns and cuts all across body, especially on her hands which she used to put out the flames. Much of her long, black hair had also burned away. Nevertheless, she smiled. They thought she would be a goner, but here she was, still fighting, and with even more stat points gained. In addition to that, she even increased the levels of some of her Skills.

Just as Sierra started smiling again, looking like a deranged madwoman covered in blood and burns, the area around her shook as the red portal flashed. Then, a giant bear-like monster with metallic front paws ending in red blades, forced itself out of the portal and landed on the ground with a heavy thud. Sierra's smile faded slightly, and in her brief instant of distraction, one of the smaller monsters charged at her and knocked her into a wall. The other smaller monsters also moved in, getting in a few smacks with their front paws. The giant monster looked away from the pathetic sight and ran out of the alley, looking for something else to hunt.

After the giant monster left, Sierra grabbed the throat of one monster with her right hand and grabbed the face of another with her left. She squeezed with all her might and forced them both onto the ground. She finished them both off with hard kicks afterwards and glared at the remaining one. She promptly made short work of the last one and then collapsed onto the ground. Just you wait...I'm going to get you too, she thought as she lost consciousness.