Demon Lord Shapeshifting System

The police chief looked at him with what seemed to be a mixture of both sympathy and annoyance. 

He furrowed his brows. "Wait a moment, you are the one of those stupid kids who stole my lights."

Roland stood up, still reeling from what just happened. He cleared his throat, and tried to buy another water bottle, this time sure that it wouldn't be made of unnatural dark matter.

"We're hardly 'kids', Chief Fieldings. But yes. We did steal your lights, but that's because we don't know why exactly you put it there." Roland said, calming his nerves. 

The man scoffed. "You prob'ly know now, eh?"

Roland's face became crestfallen as he remembered that paranoia that tried to sink its teeth into him while he was waiting for Harker in the Circus Cabaret. 

"Yes." 

He drank from his water bottle, but it hardly made things better. His throat felt hoarse, like he had been screaming for hours. And maybe he was. 

Chief Fieldings gave him a strange look. "That thing you saw…. That's not the same with that commie piece of shit's patron, right?"

Roland shook his head. 

"Is it your patron then?" The policeman then asked, this time more guarded.

Roland shook his head. "Hardly a patron if it doesn't give me anything but nightmares."

Chief Fieldings then took a deep breath. "And these nightmares…. Does it include asking you to accept it?"

At this, Roland did not answer. 

His silence was enough for the policeman. He patted his shoulder, and sat on one of the chairs. 

"It wants to be your patron. It will try and mark you soon, especially if you keep showing it your weaknesses."

Roland clenched his fist, crushing the water bottle in his hand. 

"Oh yes. So I just have to man up. Ignore the callings of the dark, ignore my feelings. I could just decide that it won't affect me and poof! It will be gone. Well, I have heard that advice so many times already, Sir—"

"Idiot. I'm not telling you to ignore your feelings." The policeman interrupted him.

Roland was still seething, and he can't describe what exactly ticked him off. He then realized that it was the policeman himself who was making him so angry, but not at him. His anger was just there, present and undirected. So visceral and carnal…..

That his vision was going red, and he just want to….. let it all go.

"What are you doing to me?" Roland frowned. 

"Feelings are not unimportant. Feelings are the one thing that can save you against them, against those things that want you to succumb into agony and dread." The chief said, in almost like a fatherly tone. "And the strongest ones would be anger, not to yourself, no. That's what the darkness wants. What you need is rage against THEM."

He spoke about rage with so much passion that it almost seemed for a moment that his eyes would burn bright red. 

Roland shook his head at this. "I don't want to hurt anyone."

"You don't want to hurt those that matter to you. That's different." Chief Fieldings corrected him, this vital energy subsiding a little bit. "But what you need is….."

"Vengeance. A fury that's directed, that is purely focused on one thing. I'm not asking you to be a fire that burns everything indiscriminately. I'm talking about becoming a bullet that aims with precision."

He went to take something from his pocket. It was an army tag. 

Roland recognized the dark stains in it. Blood stains. And the name that was engraved was not Lance Fieldings, but someone else's. It says: 

[Roosevelt

Conrey K.

009-173-22

Blood Type O

Protestant ]

Chief Fieldings already knew that Roland was going to ask who this Conrey Roosevelt was, and answered it before he opened his mouth. 

"My partner. He and I used to solve cases together as detectives. But before that, we got drafted for Vietnam. He took a hit and I took a hit, they offered us to get training as a cop and we rather have that than be out there. Thinkin' we'd just be fatties running on donuts and soda for fuel."

He chuckled bitterly. "How wrong we were. Actually, everything's been fine until it all went wrong in '84."

Roland remembered. "The gentrification. Did he—"

"Yep." Chief Fieldings looked at the army tag with a somber expression. "Was partly our fault. Some of us got carried away, knocked over too many people and got a little too rough. Then the people started fighting back. We pushed them harder."

Roland scoffed. "By harder, you mean you started slaughtering them."

Chief Fieldings turned to him with a serious expression. 

"Lookie here, blondie. If you had lived the way I did, been to the battlefield then go back to the States with a bunch of different ethnicities attacking you… You'd be trigger-happy too. Because the war fucks up your reflexes. It's either them…. or you. And even now, I still believe that a bit."

Roland narrowed his eyes. "Is that why you're rougher towards Felix Garcia compared to say… A criminal who's not a different ethnicity from you?"

Chief Fieldings was quiet for a while. Then, he said:

"You're thinkin' I'm the one who got that kid in jail, dontcha?"

Roland tilted his head. "Are you?"

The policeman did not even hesitate to answer: 

"Yes. I chose him to be the sacrificial lamb."

Roland finally had enough listening to this man, standing up from his chair. "Hah! Then are you here to stop us from proving that to the public? Found us snooping around with your Imposter patron and now you want to aim this 'gun of vengeance' on us too?"

"The Imposter ain't my patron!" Chief Fieldings cried, in a tone that seemed to take great offense.

He balled his fists. "I'd never serve those foreign hunks of plastic like that commie does! I'm just stuck in a draw that's the only thing keeping this fucking city into another warzone like back then!"

Roland retorted: "So what, we're supposed to thank you for offering a few morsels to some plastic monsters to keep us safe!?"

Chief Fieldings sighed. "You're not getting it."

He stood up and looked at Roland seriously. "What I'm sayin' is that you need to make a choice. Your people or theirs. If you don't want this pitch black attackin' your friends, then you have to pick up that gun and think of yourselves first. Protect yourself and your comrades, even if you have to start shooting on some innocents just to get to that thing you're after."

Roland was disgusted by the pure lack of remorse of this man. And he even dares to rationalize it by some grand ideal of pure survival. 

Chief Fieldings could tell he was feeling that way, and he then pointed to a certain direction. 

"If you have a choice to kill that friend of yours or that Latino boy you barely knew, what will you choose?"

Roland gritted his teeth. "Seriously? You're using the trolley problem on me now? That's an old, pointless dilemma that falls apart the moment you realize you can attempt something that would save both!"

"And that's why I'm here. I'm offering you something that can save both."

Roland's eyes widened at this response. Chief Fieldings took out something from his hand. It was an unused bullet, but it was dipped in blood. 

"I reckon that you would not be so easy to convince. But this is the only way. You want to protect the innocents and your friends? Then you need to be on the same level as them. I could have done it with a partner, with Conrey….. But I can't do it alone. That's why I'd have to settle for a draw."

He placed the bullet painted with blood on Roland's hand. "If you have a gun, you can do it yourself. Or if you can't, I can help you. I have one in my car, and we can do it somewhere no one could hear the sounds."

Roland realized what he's trying to make him do with that bullet. He pushed the bullet back to him. 

"No! You want me to be marked by whatever your patron is!?"

"Would you rather be marked by the darkness, then?" Chief Fieldings raised an eyebrow. "Because once you are, it won't allow you to protect anything at all. It would just consume you in that pitch black that started from your mind, spreading its tendrils on everyone else.…"

He pointed at that spilled water on the floor. 

"Until they become tired, soulless poor bastards that only knew to mope around while waiting for the end of days. The end of all existence. Is that what you want?"

Roland clenched his teeth so tightly that his gums felt numb. But he didn't care. 

He was just so overwhelmed.

The paranoia was spreading, along with that guilt and the desire to just disappear. To die, to perish. 

But there was a new calling, a calling for revenge and endless violence to settle his score with the ones against him. Which was basically the whole world.

What would happen if he let that call for violence win against the suicidal thoughts? Is that really picking a lesser of two evils, or would it eventually lead to him destroying everything?

In the end, he remembered his face. Mr. Shadow's face...

The world was cruel and unjust. So why shouldn't he be the same once in a while, if it's to achive his vendetta against it?

"Where's your gun? I'll do it myself."