Hey everyone! So this is the prologue for the sequel of Egle Rising! I hope you all are as excited as I am now that I've actually started to write it. Let me know what you guys think of the new character I introduced.
Nevermore's Wrath
Prologue
Silver sat silently as his close friend and teammate Whitney carefully drove through the cluttered streets of a small city in Mistral. It had been two years since Atlas had invaded the Kingdom of Mistral and many urban areas had completely evacuated ahead of the Atlesian Knights and Paladins that were almost always sent as a shock force ahead of the rest of the Atlesian armed forces. Silver, Whitney, and the rest of Team SHDW were special operatives usually sent into Atlesian occupied territory to retrieve any information on Atlesian troop movements and assassinate high ranking officers. Today they were sent into the abandoned city to retrieve a defector claiming to have vital information on a large Atlesian offensive.
Silver was a handsome panther faunus that stood at six feet and one inch. He and the rest of his team were all aged at twenty-four years old. He had wavy, semi-long, pure black hair and panther ears with glowing silver eyes that had a cat like slit to their pupils. He was lean for his height but was powerful none the less. He retracted a single claw from his right hand and tapped it impatiently against this knee as Whitney carefully turned down another abandoned street. Silver calmly switched his throat mic on and spoke into it.
"Hey, Hazel? You seeing any sign of this asshole?" Silver said as he looked around for any signs of life.
Two miles west of Silver's position, Hazel sat in the passenger seat as Duff drove down a street slowly. She looked out the window patiently as she looked for their contact. She nearly jumped out of her seat when Silver's voice broke the silence and cracked into her earpiece. Duff chuckled softly at his partner, to which Hazel playfully punched him in the arm.
"Nope. I'm starting to think this is just a wild goose chase." Hazel replied in an annoyed tone.
Silver sighed in frustration as he was starting to fill the same way. Their contact said for them to meet him in the city but didn't tell them the exact location of where they could find him. He thought for a few moments before letting out another sigh and responding to Hazel again.
"Alright, Hazel and Duff look around for a few more minutes before heading to our meet up point. If this guy means business then he has a time limit to prove it." Silver said with an annoyed tone.
As Hazel and Duff turned down another street, Duff came to a near halt at the sight of a hooded figure standing in the middle of the abandoned street. Duff and Hazel looked at each other briefly before Hazel got back on her radio to contact Silver about the figure.
"Uh…Silver?" Hazel said with a slight hint of worry in her voice.
"Go ahead, Hazel. What is it?" Silver came back after a few seconds of silence.
"I think we've found our guy. There's this person standing in the middle of the road with a cloak on. It's kind of freaky looking." Hazel replied as she and Duff looked on at the motionless figure that stood no more than fifty yards ahead of them.
"He's just standing in the middle of the road? What's the description?" Silver said as he motioned Whitney to start driving to the rest of their team's location.
"Fuck if I know, the person has a hood on. I can't see their face. I can tell it's a man though from his build. Tall, stocky, has a sword scabbard poking out from the bottom of the cloak. Oh, and it looks like he's been hurt pretty badly in the past." Hazel responded as she squinted to focus on the figure who still remained motionless. "I'm going to get out. Duff, you stay here in case something goes wrong." She continued as she opened her door.
"What do you mean it looks like he's been hurt? Hazel stay in the vehicle." Silver said with a worried voice before directing Whitney to drive faster.
"Yeah, it looks like he has a prostatic arm of some sort. His right arm is made of some sort of metal." Hazel said as she stepped out of the car, ignoring Silver's warning.
Silver's ears twitched as he heard the last part of Hazel's description of the figure in the street. Something about what she was describing wasn't right. He couldn't shake the feeling that something seriously bad was about to happen. He quickly pulled out his scroll and started searching through his mobile dossier of high ranking Atlesian operatives. He quickly looked for any information on agents with metal arms before finding the one he was looking for. Silver's eyes widened and his blood froze instantly as he saw the name of the Atlesian agent that fit the description Hazel had gave him.
"Hazel…buddy?" Silver said as calmly as he could.
"Yeah? What is it?" Hazel came back after a few moments.
"I need you to get back in the car with Duff. And I need you and Duff to get as far away from that man as you can, as fast as you can. Do not engage with him at all. Do you understand me? We've been set up. Do not get near him." Silver ordered his teammate quickly.
Back at Hazel's location, Duff calmly put the car's gear into reverse and reached out for Hazel's hand. He didn't take his eyes off of the hooded figure for a second as Hazel slowly started to move back towards the car's still open door. The figure swayed slowly before raising its metal arm up to the hood around its head and pulled it back to reveal a young man with long white hair, golden eyes, and a handsome face with three lite scars going across his left cheek. Hazel's heart stopped as she instantly recognized the man standing before her.
"Silver…it's him. It's The Nevermore." Hazel said with a rush of fear filling her voice.
"Hazel, Duff! Get out of there now! Get as far away from him as you can right now!" Silver yelled as Whitney sped around a corner, narrowly dodging an abandoned car.
The figure smiled before quickly placing his metal hand in his cloak and pulling out a bottle of dust. He crushed the bottle in his right hand and it instantly morphed into a machine gun. Hazel quickly dove into the car as Duff sped in reverse away from the figure. The figure stepped forward and raised his arm before firing off a fierce volley of bullets from the machine gun that his hand morphed into. The rounds smashed into the road around the car, tearing into the front left tire of the car.
Duff struggled to maintain control of the car but it ended up spinning out of control and into a light pole. Hazel screamed out in pain as her side of the car smashed into the pole, the force of the impact breaking two of her ribs. Duff shook his head as he tried to come back to his senses after the crash. He quickly looked over Hazel to make sure she wasn't pinned in the car.
"You okay?" Duff asked her as he reached for his weapon. "Try to climb out of the window. I'm going to give you covering…" He continued before another volley of bullets slammed into the car.
This time the bullets managed to hit their target as they ripped into Duff's body. His head exploded from several rounds hitting it, sending blood splashing onto Hazel as her teammate's body shook violently from being shot. Duff's lifeless body slummed over Hazel as she struggled to duck in her seat as to not get shot. She screamed in horror at the sight of her friend's torn up corpse that now laid on top of her.
"Hazel? Duff? Talk to me damnit! Are you two okay?" Silver yelled over his mic as the sounds of the wreck and gunfire roared from his earpiece.
"Duff's dead! The motherfucker shot him. I'm trapped inside the car. If you're going to do something you better do it fast, boss!" Hazel reported with fear making her voice tremble.
Whitney drifted around a corner and pointed down the street at Hazel's car. The figure was walking towards the car but stopped as it saw Whitney and Silver's car approaching him. The figure drew a long nagamaki sword from the scabbard hidden inside its cloak and shifted itself into a combat stance. Silver growled at the sight of one of the most powerful agents of Atlas.
"Whitney, ram that bastard." Silver snarled, to which Whitney grinned and floored the gas pedal.
As the car zoomed towards the man, he simply laughed softly under his breath before pulling a trigger on the hilt of his sword and swiping the blade horizontally at the car. As the blade cut through the air it created a large arc of electricity that shot forward towards the car.
Inside the car Silver's eyes widened at the sight of the wave of electricity speeding towards the car. He turned to Whitney and ordered her to duck before he pinned himself down against the dashboard with only seconds to spare. Whitney wasn't fast enough however and the arc of electricity cut through the top of the car and decapitated her. Her head dropped down into her lap as blood poured out from her neck.
The car kept speeding towards the man before he darted forward and punched the hood the vehicle with all of his might, causing it to come to a violent halt. Inside the car Silver groaned in pain from the force of the stop and looked at Whitney's corpse in a daze. He shook his head gently as he felt the impact of the man jumping on the hood and looked on in disbelief as he tore the roof of the car off and threw it to the side. The man reached into the car and grabbed Silver by his shirt collar before throwing him from the car and onto the hood of a parked car about thirty feet away. Silver yelled out in pain as the impact knocked the breath out of him. He rolled off of the car and onto the ground where he struggled to stand.
As the figure began to approach Silver to deliver the killing blow a loud crack rang out. The man's head jerked to the side and blood dripped from his chin. The figure raised his metal hand to his face and wiped away the blood on his cheek before turning to face Hazel who had managed to climb from her wrecked car. She stood in a combat stance with her weapon, a long whip with tiny hooks and blades built into the rope, at her side.
"Get out of here Silver. This asshole is mine." Hazel said through gritted teeth as she brushed the whip against the ground slowly.
Silver hesitated before nodding. He quickly activated his semblance and vanished from sight, much to the confusion of the cloaked man who quickly morphed his hand back into a gun and fired off a short volley at the area around where Silver had been laying seconds before. Hazel smacked the man with her whip again, getting his attention back on her.
"Hey! He's gone, asshole. It's just us now." She yelled at the man before taking a few steps to her side to give herself a better angle to fight the man.
Hazel slung her whip at the man again but he quickly raised his sword and caught the rope which wrapped around the blade. He then grinned slyly before slamming the blade down into a small puddle beside him and pulled the trigger on the hilt. A stream of electricity shot down the whip and slammed into Hazel who let out a painful scream as her body convulsed and fell to the ground. The man yanked his sword back up from the puddle and shook the rope from it before walking calmly to the still shaking Hazel. He stood over her and began to speak into the headset in his ear.
"Cinder? It's Roland. Team SHDW is taken care of. Their leader managed to escape but he shouldn't be a problem." The man said calmly before putting his foot on Hazel's throat and pressing down with enough force to crush her windpipe.
"Good job, Roland. Come back to base. We have a new mission. We're going back to Vale." Cinder's voice came over the headset.
"Roger that. On my way" Roland said as he turned and walked down the street towards where he hid his VTOL.
Silver looked on from the shadows, his semblance still active. He watched as Roland left the area before coming out of his hiding spot to retrieve his fallen teammates' belongings. He watched in anger as the Bullhead VTOL flew into the distance before speaking to himself.
"This isn't over, Roland. I will track you down and I will destroy you. You haven't seen the last of Silver Morrigan. I promise you that." Silver said out loud before trying to radio for an extraction back to his own base.