<span style="font-size: 85%; line-height: 116%;">He is pathetic...<br/><br/>That is what Gabriel thought as they reached their destination. They being him, the twenty-five Silencers behind him, and the blonde haired one beside him that he knew as Seth. Walking feebly in front of them, a brown haired man pointed towards a building down the road.<br/><br/>"There....that's the one right there." he said, his hand shaking somewhat due to fear of the creatures behind him. He made Gabriel sick, every action that this man did was a monument to how feeble and weak he was. He had come to Headquarters as pathetic as he looked now and had sought an audience with the Council of Twenty. Apparently whatever blind luck allowed to even get close to the place was also what allowed him inside without losing any part of his body. He was not given an audience with the Council but was able to relay information about a Hunter hideaway that was not so far away. He said that he sought safety among the Silencers and that it was preferable to dying by the plethora of ways that being a human in the city entailed. After promising that the humans would be spared and kept within the headquarters it was decided that Gabriel would lead the raid along with Seth, and that they were to take back any humans they found alive.<br/><br/>And that is how they got to this point, being led by a coward to where his previous protectors took refuge, and hating every second of it. When they got to the building he abruptly stopped, as if having second thoughts about his course of action.<br/><br/>"Well?" Gabriel said with a touch of annoyance in his voice, "Open it." The coward nodded his head and opened the front door, leading into a rather downtrodden excuse for a building. The paint on the walls was peeling off and there was almost no furniture to speak of. It appeared to have once been a bar of some sort as there was still a bartender's counter and a shelf for drinks behind it. Gabriel and the rest followed the human inside, their senses on alert for any traps. After looking around for but a moment Gabriel was certain that this room was empty.<br/><br/>"Looks empty to me." Seth commented, he must have thought the same thing.<br/><br/>"Oh no it's not empty! There is a secret passage in this room that leads to them." the human said in a rather panicked manner, possibly afraid that they thought he was deceiving them. "It is around here somewhere, sorry my memory fails me when I am nervous."<br/><br/>"Just be quiet and show us where it is." Gabriel responded, getting more annoyed by this man's voice with each word that came out of his mouth. The man immediately stopped his train of thought and began frantically searching for the secret entrance. After about twenty seconds of waiting the man lifted up a section of the wood floor to reveal a tunnel that descended down into the ground. The way was lit by lamps and at the end a steel door could be seen. The man went down into the tunnel and was followed by the Silencers, Seth and Gabriel at the very end of the group.<br/><br/>"When we get to the door I want you to get them to let you in, after that just keep your head down and we should be done rather quickly." Gabriel commanded. The man nodded and walked up to the door, knocking on it hard. The sound of a metal slot was heard as a rather husky voice greeted the man.<br/><br/>"Thomas? Where have you been? Everyone was wondering where you went." the voice on the other side said.<br/><br/>"Was just trying to see if I couldn't find any food for everyone, we were running out of food so I thought I could help." the man replied, doing his best to suppress his shakiness so as not to draw suspicion. "Can you just let me in?"<br/><br/>"Sure thing, just give me a second, the latch on this thing has been a real pain." A series of clicks and groans of metal were heard as the voice on the other end unlocked and opened the door. The moment he did all hell broke loose. The Silencer in front immediately pressed his palm forward into the chest of the portly man on the other side and unleashed blast of force that threw him far away from the door, the sound of the man's chest breaking was audible for only so long before the uproar of noise that followed. Numerous voices could be heard, some enraged and authoritative and others as panicky as the coward that led them here. A woman's scream was highly audible above it all but quickly faded as she seemingly left the first room. The Silencers swarmed in, each one letting their powers emerge and some voicing their excitement at the blood that was about to be shed. Seth and Gabriel waited a moment before calmly walking in and following them.<br/><br/>The room was square in shape and pretty large in size, and it appeared that it had been dug out as it did not have the consistent shapes and straight lines of an organized piece of architecture. Three doorways led to other areas of the abode, and in front of each one was a mass of bodies shedding blood all over the area around them. Hunters and Silencers were fighting to his left, right, and front and for the most part the Silencers were winning. It seemed that the Hunters simply did not have the numbers required to properly fight them. Two combatants momentarily escaped their group to his right, one a Silencer that had taken on a beastly transformation resembling that of a minotaur and the other a Hunter that wielded weapons made out of what appeared to be his bones. The Hunter began throwing tiny spear head shaped bones at the beastly Silencer, replenishing the ones he let loose with more that were formed from his body. Many of them found their target in the minotaur's chest, but it was unfazed as it charged at the Hunter and gored him on its horn. He struggled for but a moment on the horn, and then went limp, the Silencer flicking him off of his  horn.<br/><br/>Seth and Gabriel stood in the center of the room, watching the battle that was taking place. Seth laughed somewhat, drawing Gabriel's gaze to him.<br/><br/>"Remember a joke Seth?" Gabriel inquired.<br/><br/>"No....I just get a sort of rush when stuff like this happens. Shame that it doesn't look like we will be participating anytime soon though." Gabriel was about to give Seth a lecture on how he shouldn't lust for battle so much but his train of thought was interrupted by a sound he heard behind them. Turning he saw a crowd of Hunters coming down the entrance tunnel, yelling at the top of their lungs. It seemed that they had dug a tunnel that allowed them to ambush from behind should an attack ever happen. They wanted to make up for their somewhat small numbers by boxing their adversaries in.<br/><br/>"Looks like you'll get your chance now, I would say there are six of them right behind us." Gabriel said, Seth setting his gaze upon the group that had attempted to ambush them. Seth smirked and flexed his arms as they burst into flames. His demon Ifrit's power emerged in the form of fire, fitting for one fitting Seth's boisterous and battle-loving personality. Gabriel simply tensed in place and prepared himself for the fight. Seth ran ahead of him and engaged two Hunters, his fists flying all over the place as he fought. Two more were intercepted by a group of lesser Silencers that grew bored of their previous fight and wanted something different. The last two closed in on Gabriel.<br/><br/>The one to his left had sharp claws and teeth and the one on the right seemed to be made entirely of rock. The clawed Hunter attacked first and swiped his claw towards Gabriel's head, a rather foolish move in Gabriel's opinion, the Hunter overextended himself and would leave himself completely vulnerable should that attack miss, which it did as Gabriel swiftly ducked under it and sent a hard punch to the Hunter's gut. The blow let all the air out of the Hunter's lungs and caused him to let out a gasp of pain and bend over. The rocky Hunter then entered the fight with an attack of his own, a straight punch aimed at Gabriel's face. Gabriel batted the Hunter's rather heavy arm as if it was a regular human arm and turned with his parry, kicking the Hunter in the side and breaking off some of his rocky form. Gabriel sent out a hard punch of his own and when the fist made contact with the golem's chest a mass that had accumulated in Gabriel's shoulder was shunted through his arm and joined his fist on contact, causing the golem to go into the air and hit the wall behind him with a loud noise as his rocky body continued to break. Gabriel's arm rippled and returned to a state of normalcy.<br/><br/>The clawed Hunter behind him had regained his breath and ran him through with his claw, catching Gabriel somewhat by surprise. He also bit at his throat, sinking his teeth into the flesh of his neck. Gabriel grunted a little though he did not let the attack stop him from counter-attacking. He lifted his left arm up into the air and elbowed the Hunter in the chest. The Hunter let out a soundless gasp of pain as a jagged black blade-like growth erupted from his elbow and stabbed through his heart and out the other side. Feeling the pressure on his neck release Gabriel took his other hand and gripped the arm that had gone through his body up to the elbow. His arm rippled and grew a little in size and muscle definition as he snapped the arm at the elbow and then tore it off. He then turned to face the now one-clawed hunter, his elbow blade retracting into his arm as he did so. He gripped the Hunter's head in both hands and twisted hard, snapping the mutilated hunter's neck and putting him out of his misery. The gash in his neck and the hole in his chest quickly healed and disappeared without even a scar. He walked towards the injured golem Hunter and stood before it. It delivered a hard punch to his cheek that caused his neck to snap to the side and Gabriel responded by punching it even harder, breaking apart the rocky layer and exposing the left side of its face. It was a girl as he could now tell, she looked barely old enough to have gotten out of high school. He did not let this stop him from punching her again and again until the rock armor she had brought up around her simply faded away. Weakened and beaten he lifted her by her collar and decided to finish her quickly. He held his hand up to her and before his eyes his hand slowly changed in shape, what was once a regular human hand was not a blackened and grotesque claw with five black and bony blades replacing his fingers. He drew them swiftly across her throat and cut it open, watching the life quickly fade from her as she drowned in her own blood. He dropped her body and looked around him and saw the battle was coming to a close. No....it wasn't a battle, a battle implied that both sides had a chance of winning. What Gabriel saw was could simply be called a massacre.<br/><br/>Within the next minute all the Hunters were dead, seventeen in total. The Silencers had lost fourteen of their own numbers, though those could easily be replaced. While the Hunters' plan of holding such a small place against large numbers through bottlenecking and boxing them in was a intelligent idea to Gabriel, he judged that they just did not have the combat skill to enforce it properly. In the room across from the entrance was a bunch of humans all huddled together. Some were praying, others were crying, and two men carrying makeshift spears attempted to keep the Silencers at bay. They were killed without pause by the small group of Silencers that entered the room. Following orders, they did not kill any other humans. Single-file line, the humans were escorted out of the hideaway and out into the street. Silencers covered every side and Seth and Gabriel followed close behind.<br/><br/>"Stop," Gabriel commanded to the line and Silencers leading them, "I want to talk to the one who brought us here." Thomas the human emerged from the line, the humans he passed cussing at him and showing their disdain for his actions. He stood before Gabriel, tears were flowing down his face and he was sobbing, he had realized much earlier the consequences of his actions and simply could not handle it. Gabriel delivered a hard punch to his right cheek, making Thomas let out a surprised gasp and sending him to the ground. He mewled in pain and cried some more. "You disgust me." Gabriel said, his voice still level in tone. "As much as you have assisted us I cannot stand people like you, cowards who think only of themselves." Thomas cried some more and put his hands over his ears, unable to handle the truth as it came out of Gabriel's mouth. He lifted Thomas up by his collar and punched his arm clean through his stomach, causing Thomas to let out a loud scream of pain.<br/><br/>"I cannot allow trash like you to even set foot in our home." Gabriel said. Seth watched with a small smirk on his face as Gabriel slowly began to consume Thomas. Thomas's body slowly began to shrivel up, his skin pressing tight to his skeleton, giving him the appearance of a corpse. Gabriel's arm rippled as Thomas's very being was pulled into himself. He let the husk of flesh and bone that was once Thomas go and it fell to the ground with a light noise, a further testament to just how little of the person Gabriel had left behind.<br/><br/>"Had your fill Gabe? C'mon let's RTB we do not need to stick around here." Seth said, his tone rather disappointed as he was slowly getting off of the high of battle. Gabriel nodded and the line of prisoners resumed its trek back to Headquarters, Gabriel and Seth following right behind them.</span>