“Turn your back on me, do you?” said Dr. Kratos. He raised a single blade. It burned with a wrathful vermillion glow. “First Responders of Sparta!”

Sam and Vergil ceased their scuffle. The canopy above folded under the weight of a clump of chalk-white boats, which fell into the gap between the medical ship and the ferry. A phalanx of speed-boats, each filled with a phalanx of soldiers, whose bodies were obscured by massive shields. Blazoned on them were those red, upside-down crosses.

Dr. Kratos pointed his blade at the ferry. “I will be seeing the Son of Sparda now. Your appointment is at hand.”

The cluster of boats split apart and rushed the ferry with blistering speed. The soldiers– er, nurses, stacked their shields and climbed onto the boat. They jabbed at Sam and Vergil with enormous pointed thermometers. The two, mowed down the attendants one by one, they broke through shields, severed phantasmal limbs— but they were fighting a flood. The sheer number of first responders overwhelmed them, the weight of their response threatened to sink the ship.

“Damn you!” said Vergil. “Unhand me!”

Sam craned his neck to keep track of Vergil— but with no success. He swore under his breath. He didn’t care about the cannon fodder: he had a fight to finish.

Sam decided to play doctor himself, and performed an impromptu leg “surgery” on one of the responders in front of him.The new amputee fell backwards, kindly offering his shield as a platform from which to jump. Sam obliged. From his new vantage point, he could see a swarm of nurses below rush around a solitary blue figure, strap him down to an ethereal gurney, and whisk him away. A long strip of gauze wrapped around Sam’s leg and pulled him back to deck. And all he could see was nurses again.

He cut the gauze off, and cut down a squad of first responders. But there was no end to them.

Lucky for him, then, that they didn’t bleed. Otherwise, cleanup would be a bitch.

- Ragnarust Round 1