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· Chapter IV · Into Shadow ·
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"Remember that I told you about humans not being welcome in this city? Over the past four months, two humans have been apprehended within the city. One was a regular trader sneaking in, he was let go on short notice. I found him when nosing around the illegal entrances to the city. He told me he had been mind-probed on suspicion of being associated with some other human who was also there. This might seem inconsequential, but apparently that man had been there for a while ..... normally they immediately kick out the humans. I wasn't getting anywhere, so I looked into it. My fine nose for this sort of thing was right, off course."
She caught her breath and tossed a small crystal ball to Shiru. The angel turned it on and unintelligible image appeared in the air before them, many dots lining out a worm-like shape and various strange signs. The angels and the imp could read them, their expression changed. It wasn't the optimism the two children were expecting though.
"What the heck?" Zaha muttered.
"Ai, kinda interesting, no?"
"Excuse me, but what's going on?" Mondo asked.
"That's the energy print of the place to which they tracked our suspect's entrance." Theta said. "You can't really see but—" At that moment Shiru used her light spinning to change the projection, turning it into a color image. What appeared was a blurred image of the long neck and head of the Terror Dragon.
Mondo and Rokuna's perked up.
"It really is here! Let's go get it!" Mondo jumped up, but soon noticed no one responded.
"Hold it, the head is where he entered?" with a slight shiver in her voice.
Theta nodded. "It's been moved since, but yeah, he came in from within the head apparently. Must have been either teleported there or smuggled in through it."
"But why through the head?"
Theta seemed to think for a moment. "That's probably because of the static."
"Huh?"
"You really don't know a lot yet, do you?"
Shiru took over. "It's why we couldn't smuggle ourselves in by hiding in something. When a gate transfers more than it was made for it expands, this causes a shift in the fabric of the surrounding energy streams. The security of this city is such that they can tell when this happens. But by in a way 'merging' with the monster, the static is compensated for to a degree."
"Okay, does this really matter? We've got a clue, let's go to that guy and question him!" Mondo said. Zaha set his finger to his thumb and tapped Mondo in the head hard.
"Hey, what's that good for?" he mumbled.
"Go there how? Don't go jump into things. There will be a lot of security, we need to figure out a ruse first." Zaha said.
"Yeah, the government doesn't know what they're looking at." said Ruth. "For all they know, the Terror Dragon was destroyed entirely. But they know something is up even if they can't translate that, they'll be alert around this human." The imp them turned to Rokuna.
She'd been reluctant to suggest it, but now the idea had been lighted.
"Can't she just go read the guy's mind?" Ruth asked.
· · · · · · ·
Involuntary he embraced himself. Anything else in the world he would charge headfirst into, but lately just wasn't his luck. With it's heavy bricks and iron gates and poorly lit windows, this city's equivalent of a police station was like someone had gone out of their way to make the place seem as much as one of those generic haunted castle. The only thing missing was the cheesy lightning bolt in the background.
"How nice, they even have a murder of ravens on the porch." Rokuna casually said.
"Yeah .... very nice." he whimpered.
Theta grinned and played the host who showed around her visitors, but she couldn't get out of sight of the building quick enough. After a brief walk around it she led them to a nearby park, or maybe it was an abandoned yard. Amidst gray trees with black leafs were the two angels, hidden in their cloaks and the surrounding fog.
"And?" Zaha asked.
"No ways to sneak in .... not that there was much to expect." Mondo said. "There's a whole deal of magic around the place too."
"That leaves me." Rokuna said somberly. She sat down on a fallen log and folded her hands, from which point everyone remained quiet. But it didn't take her long to open her eyes again.
"No good news here either. I can't use magic to enhance my clairvoyance and I'm not familiar with the person we're looking for so I can't link to him just like that. Someone seems to be monitoring the psychic activity using the rokumon system. Even if I were to pinpoint our target with magic-enhanced telepathy, we might be found out. I have next to no experience warding off such a conflict so it's a risk of exposure."
"That's just great." Mondo kicked away a rock.
"We could break him out instead." Shiru suggested. "If we would bring him to a quiet place outside of the territory of the Guard, Rokuna would be able to read his mind properly, right?"
Rokuna nodded. "Yes, once I know who to read, no problem. But how do we get him out?"
"Mondo is going in." Zaha suddenly said.
"What? Why me?"
"Cause that's what I've been teaching you for the past few days."
Mondo only gave him a confused look.
Zaha explained : "That scroll Arash gave him, it's the basics for possession and specifically, warding it off. I've been practicing with you on messing with psychic rokumon rules."
"Ai, isn't that .... strangely convenient." Theta said.
"Oh, so that's what all the stuff with 'ignore the energy' was for?" Mondo's optimism instantly returned.
"We'll go in together and break him out in no time."
Rokuna cast a weary look at the castle, barely visible beyond the trees. Zaha saw it.
"We? She's not going." he said. "In order to shield her as well, you'd basically have to possess her. That's a whole new story, one you can't tell."
"I'll help you from the outside, Mon-chan." she added softly.
Mondo was visibly disappointed. "Oh .... okay then." he said, looking from Zaha to Rokuna. He had been eager to do something at Rokuna's side again, this whole separation thing from the labyrinths wasn't working for him. But he had to admit he was inexperienced and couldn't even be sure whether he'd be able to shield himself properly.
"My telepathic link with you won't be affected by magic, but I can't enhance it under these conditions. I'll hear you, but you're going to have to work on hearing me, okay?"
He nodded. "Got it."
"Ai folks, hold it!" Theta said perhaps a little too loud. "Just how are you going to get him in?"
"Well, I just figured I'm going to get arrested." Mondo said.
Theta blinked. "You are crazy. The moment you're going in there and they can't read you properly they'll suspect you're in tow with that guy. Never mind they'll think you look suspiciously innocent."
Mondo grinned. "Yep, and I also have a weird red gem thingy on my forehead that might betray me. But we'll figure something out!"
Rokuna pondered. "You could just pose as a lost child? Or maybe a slave who escaped?"
"There is no slave market in this city." Theta said irritably. "I get so sick of the crap people assume about my city."
Rokuna was taken aback, she had heard an angel talk about that once, but hadn't verified it. "Sorry." she muttered.
"Lost illegal child it is, then. The most important thing is that they'll never get the idea to investigate me too deep." said Mondo. "So how am I going to look not too innocent?"
A brief silence fell, everyone around Mondo exchanged looks.
"You really need to ask that?" Ruth said.
Rokuna took a deep breath and said with a very strained voice : "You will start thinking about cute girls. A lot."
"Wablieve?" Mondo's voice was squeaky in disbelief.
· · · · · · ·
Mondo strayed the streets looking very, very disoriented. He didn't even have to act. After Rokuna had repeated her suggestion three times and he still had refused to believe his ears, she had grabbed him at the collar and said with her threatening tone that he better be thinking a lot about Saki and Lailai and Beginner once he came into the ward of the dark elves and invoke Cartoon Physics mode. If there was anything cute in there, that was fair game too.
"Understood? Drool will help."
Mondo was torn between being frightened and complete, utter confusion. Rokuna was encouraging him to swoon over other girls. Now he had heard all of it.
Nice one, universe ..... did he really drool when that happened?
Rokuna's problem wasn't so much the little female attention he got (which was considerably larger in his own mind) but that he liked flirting with them right in her face despite being more less was with her. That, and Mondo's macho mode meant he was dangerously out of touch with reality to the point where he once attacked kitties in the false belief they were threatening a girl. Neither fell in Rokuna's favor.
His thoughts were interrupted when he bumped into someone. Mondo's large brown eyes locked into the tiny ones of a troll. He briefly considered acting scared, but dismissed it at once. This person simply didn't scare him and he was sure he was a lousy actor.
"And who are you, little child?" the troll said in a friendly voice.
Bingo. Just the right person to deliver him to the station, claiming they had found an unsupervised child.
"Well, I'm pretty much totally lost." he said honestly. That wasn't a lie, seeing as he had made a gate to some random location in the city and had no idea where he was now.
It worked too.
About half an hour later, after two grueling store visits (the troll was a shopaholic), he was handed over to a patrol of dark elves on their skeletal mounts. Mondo bit through, they didn't actually look so scary in full light. Fortunately nobody checked his ears, though they did remove his hood to get a better look at his face; for that he had a headband and his hair dyed.
Mondo found it kinda humiliating, he got to sit in front of one of the riders who talked to him like he was some sort of toddler. Rokuna messaged him that since elves were much taller than humans, he probably looked like an eight year old or younger to them. Didn't stop him from being peeved at it.
In fact, he was seriously irritated after yet another joke about the way his hair pointed in all directions that he was ready to snap. Mondo rarely got ticked off, but some things managed to do the trick, like Luke when he was particular arrogant .... and uh ..... Luke. Then there was ..... uhm .... maybe it just was the drool remark.
"- Mondo, just admit it. You're angry because we pointed out your macho mode is so ridiculous it could throw off guard a high security police station. -"
Mondo pouted and crossed his arms. "- I don't hear you complain when we are going fluff mode. -"
"- That's different! -"
"- Cause I don't drool then? -"
"- Mon-chan, this is the worst time ever to start a spat with me. -"
"- Yeah, yeah. -"
They grumbled for a while, till the guard station loomed up from between the buildings. Mondo's breath became a little uneven, the elf behind him immediately noticed.
"Got a scaredycat here." she called to her companion, then she told Mondo : "You're probably not gonna go to prison, kid, lest you're some kind of spy." A failed attempt at sounding reassuring, even if he really had been a lost child.
"I'm not scared." he said grumpily.
They arrived soon and Mondo tried to focus on thoughts that would make him giddy, but up close the building seemed even more ominous. Once inside though, it strangely was a lot cozier. Not exactly happy, but definitely warmed than it had looked from the outside. He was set off while the other members of the patrol went to take care of their mounts. From there, he was escorted into a busy but muted hall.
Once out of their cloaks and veils, the female part of the dark elves were well, elves. Prrrrreeeeetty. It didn't take Mondo much effort to 'get in role'. He was placed in a small cell with a table and soon someone came to check him for a standard procedure of telltale illegal spells. By that time, with a bit of effort on his behalf, he had already sank into dreamland.
The world became a temporary haze, where he only vaguely heard someone speak.
"Well, no shape-alteration spells." concluded their test conductor. He briefly looked at Mondo's (fake) pointed ears, but then set the headband in place again. "No static, no hidden spaces, no slumbering battle spells, I don't smell any wax either and— oh my shadow, he's drooling on the table."
Wearily they beheld the boy while waiting for their psychic to have a moment. Mondo would occasionally chuckle like a lovesick fool and muttered various names. Then he suddenly got into some sort of delusional act, embracing someone who wasn't present and reciting something that might have been poetry in some state of mind, but made absolutely no sense in the language they heard it as. Both their jaws dropped when love bubbles and sparkles appeared in the air around the child.
After a mesmerized period one of them managed to say : "It's like he has a hormone overdose combined with. Just .... eh ... Go check the homunculi registers whether any of them reproduced."
"It's just so corny, I can't stop watching. It's like those soaps they send out on the crystal ball network .... I never believed I would see someone act like that in real life."
The first elbowed her. "Go check registers .... " But he couldn't stop watching himself.
"Maybe it's some new sort of illness. Maybe we could get it classified and get famous like that! Imagine that, us discovering soapatixis extremus!"
At that moment, Mondo's eye fell on the female elf and recognized a new cute girl. He immediately took her hand and put on his best sparkly teeth face. She backed off in horror, fiercely shaking her hand free before he could even get as far as to complement her on her eyes.
"Aaaah, what if it's infectious? I need a bath!" She ran out, almost bumping into their resident psychic. Just in time she backed off and gave a respectful bow.
"Now you're just overreacting." the Monitor said sternly.
The remaining agent returned Mondo to his seat and and the Monitor stood behind him, created a small rokumon between her hands and lowered it over Mondo's head. The ring became invisible and the dark elf rested her hands on Mondo's shoulders.
Mondo hardly noticed, he was currently locked in a daydream where Lailai was dancing to a song of Saki, irritably distracting for the psychic Monitor not just because it was so all-encompassing, but also frilly and happy and joyous and SHINY, quite the contrary from the strength and somberness which the dark elves valued.
Then, for a second she had been certain that she had just felt something like him using dark energy to conceal part of his mind .... but that was a ludicrous thought, as such a thing was a highly advanced skill and the very idea some top level demon had sat down with this little twit to teach it to him was too ridiculous to consider. Not even her currently most difficult prisoner had it.
Whatever. The sparkles threatened to worsen her headache beyond what it already was. There were no obvious signs of the kid being up to something in particular. She released the link and stepped away. The two agents relaxed, if there had been any reason for worry they would have heard it by now.
"Would you do something about the bubbles?" she asked as she left, in vain trying to wave off the daydream decoration.
The two agents nodded once. "We'll figure out something."
"Very well. You may bring him to the lounge, I will make up a report. Also, look for relatives, pursue the homunculus theory, this child has ..... an abnormal amount of hormones despite not even knowing about the birds and bees. Also, he obviously suffers from delusions."
"Oh, we noticed that."
Mondo became dimly aware of the room around him again and something else. Envy?
But why? Mondo couldn't tie that to anything, why would he feel envy? No, .... this was Rokuna. She probably was envious with all the girls he'd been thinking over and he became a little nervous.
Dangit, that elf that had just stood behind him had pretty eyes, he wondered what she looked like under that cloak.
Somehow, someway, Rokuna managed to give him a mental kick that mostly woke him from it. Mondo instinctively yelped, though he hadn't actually felt anything for real.
The two agents startled and the male came forth to escort Mondo away, while the female shied away when Mondo made another dash for her hands.
Mondo was shoved in a lounge supervised by a drowsy dwarf. Once there, he gradually drifted back to his common sense.
The room was empty save for that half-sleeping dwarf and several poofy chairs, one of which Mondo sat in. Unlike the coarse rock plate walls that made up most of the station, this room was comfier, he guessed this was a guest room of sorts that was reserved for anyone who wasn't convict or worked here.
Now it really sank in that he had escaped psychic detection by making a public fool of himself. Sure, his adventures in Rokumon Sekai often were silly and invoked what Rokuna called Cartoon Physics, but this .... if there ever would be a historical record of his adventures, he vowed that the way he sneaked into the dark elf guard station would never get a detailed description.
Alright. Time for action.
Rokuna bluntly suggested he just knock out the dwarf. Now, sneaking up on people wasn't exactly chivalrous and didn't fall well with Mondo. Then again, sneaking into law enforcement stations wasn't either.
Before the dwarf had a chance to ask him what he did, Mondo had taken off his helmet and whacked him on the back of the head with it. The dwarf seemed unaffected for a moment and looked behind himself with wide eyes. Mondo smiled nervously, but then the dwarf dropped over. He put the helmet back on the head it belonged to and breathed out in relief.
Now came the tricky part, finding the cell of their target. Mondo would try to sneak around with as little rokumon as possible, as he didn't want to accidentally teleport himself past any secured wall that might trigger an alarm. For this purpose he had an enchanted crayon to draw out rokumons, it was the only thing that wouldn't get confiscated.
The nearest wall served as ground for the first gate. It'd leave a blatant trace of his route, but if he was quick enough, he could actually use this to confuse his pursuers.
Where Rokuna was good with spells, Mondo was good with raw power. She guided him through the complex energetic codes, invisible to him but decipherable for her. He in turn used his magic to break the security, quietly and quickly.
They first needed whatever chamber held the reports in order to find the cell of their target, which took more than a few tries to find. Once they did, the files turned out to be stored in crystal balls ..... more time to lose, as neither of them could actually read the language the information was projected in. Rokuna created a new link to Shiru who had to help them translate.
At this point, Mondo caught voices in a nearby room. They were referring to the weird lost kid they had picked up and he went to the half open door to listen whether his absence had already been found out.
"Oh, the bubble kid? Elatte was right about the homunculus theory, apparently a certain Theta was seen with relatives that recently came over, illegally it seems."
"Hm? I believe we've got that on file. Theta, a big name for such an insignificant person, I think I can guess what line she was from."
"Shall I prepare the forms to pursue her?" It wasn't really a question, just a formality of assurance, so the answer came unexpected.
"No."
"What? But she smuggled people into the city and —"
"You and we all know what 'relative' means for the homunculi. If we dig into this, I can tell you right away what we're going to find, another nest of woe that we won't be able to do anything about. As it is, I am not going to waste any forces on something trivial like a thrift store assistant who smuggles her 'relatives' in for a visit when there are freaking Vujad soldiers in our city!" The speaker paused, apparently needing a moment to calm down.
"You say the child isn't clear of mind?"
"He seems to be rather out of it. He has some sort of spontaneous hormone overdose and bubbles appear in the air around him when he gets particularly high. The Monitor did not detect any connections the outside and he seems to carry no hidden spells either."
"Alright, send him back and give that thrift store girl a firm warning along with an order to get them out of the city on her own, lest we do it. That will do."
Aside of being peeved at the remarks on his intelligence, he realized he had to think quick. They were going to discover any time soon that he was gone.
Sooner, apparently : just then the door opposite of the desk opened.
"That doesn't look right." said one of the few agents that entered, their eye falling in Mondo in the half opened door.
Maybe eavesdropping in a public building wasn't the smartest thing to do, the Knights realized.
Mondo bolted back into the room, dropping the sphere he had been holding and into the rokumon he had come from. At this point, he lost contact with Rokuna, but he had no choice but to go on.
Hurriedly he drew another gate on the wall of his current location, a third in this room now, but the walls weren't as smooth here as in the starter room and the gate failed to come to life. Both the other rokumon started to glow, betraying someone was tapping into them. He didn't need to look to know they had started passing his gates. On the brink of panic he tried to fix his current gate.
He wasn't in time, and the head of a dark elf popped up out of one of the gates. "He's here!"
Only one thing saved Mondo from being snatched and that was that the tall elf had some serious trouble worming themselves out of the Mondo-sized gate. He restored the gate and fled.
This he repeated a few times, his crayon growing shorter and shorter and still no sign of Rokuna. Till at one point he landed in a room that already was occupied; they were waiting for him.
Against four trained elves a child like him stood no chance. Within seconds they had grabbed him, pinched his arms behind his back and pushed him to the ground. He still tried to kick, to no avail.
Where was Rokuna?
"Yeaaaaaagh!" one of them suddenly called yelled. But as they turned, the only found air.
"- Mon-chan, jump in the gate you came from! -"
"- Rokuna-chan, where were you? -"
"- Don't ask, jump the moment you're free! -"
"The moment I'm—"
Just then, Ruth appeared before the elf that was holding Mondo down and lashed out with his spiraled mini-spear. Along with another cry, Mondo noticed a few drops of blood on the ground before him.
"Get up!" the imp called.
He didn't need another prompt, wrestled free and jumped into the gate before him, which had somehow changed from the neutral white to the purple hue of the dark element.
He popped out in a room, or rather, a hall he hadn't been in before, Ruth joined him a second later. The gate he had jumped from vanished, taking along the little light it had given.
"Ruth! What's going on?" Mondo asked in the near-dark.
"Trouble." the imp said simply. "At least we don't have to worry about hiding from that fake psychic elf anymore."
"What happened? Is Rokuna okay? Were you guys found?"
The imp shook his head. "Nah, I don't know much more than you do, they just sent me in. I'm being the errand boy, as usual." he grumbled.
"Did we fail?"
The imp chuckled.
"Oh, no. With the alarm off already, I could get in relatively easy. Now, I know what cell we need."
· · · · · · ·
The 'cell' was in the middle of a hall, a simple rokumon on the floor to encase the prisoner and nothing but a few magical torches the light the place. The man sat legs crossed, arms crossed and eyes closed, most of him hidden behind black clothing. The guards had tripled in the last few minutes, Mondo wondered why they were raising security specifically around this person? They had many prisoners here, maybe they suspected they were trying to find this one? But how?
Rokuna recognized the setup.
"- Mon-chan, whatever you do, steer clear of that rokumon, this isn't the regular barrier type. -"
"- Rokuna-chan! Are you okay? Where were you?"
"- Don't worry, Mon-chan. -"
"- Okay..... just out of curiosity, what does happen if I were to touch it? -"
"- Just don't Mon-chan, it hurts. We'll have to break it first. -"
He shifted slightly in his position. Using some earth magic he had made a small outburst in a corner high in the chamber and he used Darkness to conceal himself from the elven vision. Mondo closed his eyes and moved in tandem with Rokuna, who hacked the chamber's magical security. He needed all his concentration to perceive her instructions on how exactly to hook into the energetic pattern, then he quietly repeated the unlock spell she recited. Invisibly, they tore down the barrier bit by bit.
The first to notice the break was the prisoner himself, seconds before the guards. A fight broke out at once.
What was an initial moment of absolute awe at this person's skill and agility quickly turned to horror when the man got hold of a weapon.
The dark elf guard was slaughtered before his eyes. The elves could put up a strong fight and actually seemed to get the upper hand right away, but once the soldier threw that small bomb that he got from somewhere, it was a lost cause for them. This wasn't just any human, this was a bred murderer.
"Stop it!" Mondo heard himself scream as he jumped down from his hiding spot.
The soldier was momentarily confused by where the voice came from, then he muttered some spell allowing him advanced sight. Seeing a angry child run towards him caused no little surprise, almost enough to distract him.
Not nearly enough though.
He finished off the last elf that had escaped the small explosion with a swift cut to the throat and immediately turned to Mondo, kicking him against a wall.
For a second Mondo thought he was going to die, but nothing happened.
Harsh gray eyes looked down at him from just above a black scarf.
"Who the heck are you?"
"I'm here to get you out." Mondo muttered while his eyes focused onto a bloody, motionless hand in the shadows beyond.
"That wasn't my question!"
Mondo found himself with a blade aimed at him, it was enough to snap him to his senses. He estimated the situation he was in, then sank back against the wall, kicked the blade aside and rolled off a few meters away. There he remained in a half-knelt position, one hand on the floor and ready to leap away a second time.
"You didn't have to kill them!" Mondo screamed, but his voice broke under tears.
"Are you actually crying?" the man said in disbelief.
"Yeah, sad, isn't it? " The man turned up to see Ruth, rolling his eyes. "So you two, before we engage in some rant on the morality of this whole deal, how about we escape? They're coming."
The man ran over and kicked open the door, indeed the sound of footsteps grew strong. He hesitated, not sure where to go now.
"Do you two have a way out?" he asked suspiciously.
He saw Ruth and Mondo converse quietly, at his question they looked up. Mondo said :"Follow me." in a tone that wasn't just a little bitter.
Mondo created a new gate and all three passed it. Now that they had been found out, Mondo made no more effort to conceal his presence. They landed a few streets away from the station, which was as far as Mondo could teleport while still being relatively certain he wasn't bringing them into a dangerous position.
Outside they had the advantage none of the dark elves were particularly skilled rokumon creators, let alone summoners, .... it was just a bit of a problem they didn't give Mondo any time to calculate any farther reaching gates and chances he could not take in this unfamiliar area. If he teleported them into the wrong place, it could kill them.
"I've got no choice." Mondo said ruefully. He dismissed the dark energy clouding his summoner's key, reached forth the remnant of the crayon and drew a rokumon in the air. The crayon burned up almost entirely as he called out :
"Pegasus, please, I need your help!"
The gate erupted at once into a spray of clouds as a the winged horse jumped from it. Within mental seconds Mondo shared his situation with Pegasus, as hoped he was all too eager to help. The soldier needed no further prodding either and jumped onto the horse's back as well. Pegasus spread his wings and took off at once.
Their escape route was limited as the winged horse needed broad streets to fly through and rising above the buildings was out of the question; his fierce white coat made him an easy target in the air above.
First the citizens did not notice anything out of the ordinary, but when they saw the Guard pursue the winged horse, they started to flock aside. The skeletal mounts could not fly, but they could spit some sort of energy that turned to sticky goo once it hit something. Amidst the crowded street they had to be careful with that, but once the people cleared away, on was the hit-the-target game.
Where a bird would've already crashed into a wall, Pegasus could lopside and brace off with his hooves, looking like he ran across the walls several times. This was their advantage against the skeletal creatures, till they encountered a group ahead of them that had crawled up the walls. Behind them their pursuers prepared to drive them towards the trap by aiming at the center of the street's airspace.
"Keep flying in the center!" the man called.
"But they'll hit us, we still have a chance if we try to dodge them at the walls!"
"Just freaking do it!"
Looking back, Mondo noticed him throwing something.
This bomb had a larger damage range, even taking along part of the nearby buildings. Mondo had no time being shocked over the people that might have just died there. Pegasus passed right at the center, but one of the mounts leaped off the wall so that the elf on it could jump at Pegasus.
"Don't!" Pegasus called, but the man had already jumped off.
Pegasus lost balance for due to the extra push and barely avoided another of the skeletal creatures. He made as sharp a turn as he could manage and flew back. They found the man in a window post, and another dead elf down on the street.
Almost enough for Mondo to leave him behind before he killed anyone else, but he didn't. Pegasus steered closer and their 'guest' jumped back on.
"Where do you keep those bombs?" Mondo couldn't help but ask, just in case the man ever decided to throw one in his direction.
"Stomach and teeth." he simply said.
They were being driven to a remote area of the city, one that had less people in it. When Mondo noticed this, he reluctantly asked :"How much of those bombs do you have left?"
"How much do you need?"
"Enough time for me to make a gate to a safe place. I'm gonna need some time to harness energy for a long distance and they need to stay away for a while so they don't follow us once we're through."
"Why don't you just close the gate behind you?"
"Well, I happen to have no fricking idea how to do that."
"What? Why not?"
"I don't know how to close a gate, I never had to! They usually just disappear on their own!"
"That's just great. You somehow have the skill to sneak past the Monitor and some freaky green card for gate energy, but you can't even close one?"
Mondo didn't reply. His entrance tactic was a disgraceful contrast to how bloody today had become, and certainly not something this person needed to know about.
"Whatever time I can buy us won't be enough if you can't close a gate behind you."
Just at that moment, Rokuna said : "- Mon-chan, I'm going to lose touch with you again, just keep fleeing for now! -"
"What? Rokuna-chan, wait a moment! Rokuna-chan?"
· · · · · · ·
The first thing the Monitor noticed was someone who entered the station after the alarm had subdued, yet she did not strike alarm for some reason.
The second thing the Monitor noticed was, aside of a slight rise in her Vujad-induced headache, a hint of a mellow, unnaturally soothing feeling. She should really be calling for an escort now she was alone, but it felt so needless.
There her visitor was, in the corner of her private chamber. With her big green eyes and folded hands, she looked almost angelically innocent, but something about her eyes was very, very off. She now noticed the human ears as well and assumed the boy she had met earlier had sported some new variant of fake ears.
The Monitor calmly turned on some lights.
"You're the one that hacked me previously. You have some nerve showing up in here, after such a loss."
"A loss? Well, you did find out about us, indeed. But I lost nothing." Rokuna smiled, but there was no friendliness in it.
"You bought your friend time, but he hasn't escaped yet. You could try a repeat, off course, but we'll catch him in the end." said the Monitor. "Then I'll find out what is going on for real."
"I could just tell you." Rokuna offered. "But I've got a feeling you won't listen. I already probed the atmosphere of the building the moment I saw it. It's not your job to listen, you don't care, you'll leave that to the Court and we simply don't have that sort of time."
The elf lady tilted her head a little, curiously looking the child over.
"What are you doing?" she asked, though she had no idea why in particular.
"A lot of things you won't understand at all."
"Such big words for such a young human child. I've spent two centuries reading people's minds, there is a lot that I understand. How would a child of the short lived human race know more than I?"
Rokuna sat down on a chair as if she had nothing in the world to worry about, least from the elf before her.
"You never really read any minds." she said, hoping to bait her arrogance. "You're a fake."
The elf remained perfectly composed as she sat down opposite of Rokuna, but her emotions were playing up. Arrogance was a great weakness to exploit.
"How would you know?"
"You don't have any talent for clairvoyance by your own, so something as simple as dark energy can obscure your view of a mind. You see only the top layer of thoughts, but you don't feel anything. You're a fake. And I deeply envy you for that. You're completely dependent on this one specific magical system here, yet you have all that influence simply by being in your little nest here. How long did it take your people to develop this system?"
"Eighty years. That's eighty years of solid research and testing, and thousands of years of proved functionality. Off course it works. And you should indeed envy that."
"Yet today someone got through."
"Such happens. I underestimated him. That was a very clever trick of who ever sent you two."
Rokuna sighed and leaned her chin on her hands.
"The living mind has so much corners and layers, but all you can see are the direct, conscious thoughts. You can't even tell anything farther .... that's what I envy, not your phony system. Though, I must give the creator of the system credit. It surely is effective."
"Oh? With such words you make it sound like you can do any better."
Rokuna sat up straight.
"How are your guards doing, chasing my friend and that .... what is he called, a Vujad soldier?"
When the elf noticed her perception of her guards were falling away one by one, she stood up, panic threatening to overcome her .... but it didn't happen.
"See? Your system only works when you focus on it, it's not part of you. I think that's why you've been here for two hundred years, while the system has been around for a thousand years or so. Your precedors eventually have their natural clairvoyance awaken, and then they become useless when the pain affects them deeper."
"What are you doing?" asked the elf again, her eyes shooting around as if she sought something .... Rokuna didn't allow her to see a weapon in anything. Her formerly sweet expression gradually turned into a mischievous one.
"You're just doing your job, I know." Rokuna said. "But as a Mon Colle Knight, so am I."
The elf looked directly at the girl now.
"Pandæmonium wants nothing to do with you!" she fiercely whispered.
"Even if you know we're only doing it to unseal the prisons in Kharon? People are dying right now there, many of them citizens of the dark realm. We have no time. So, I took over the parts of your mind you're not even aware that you have, specifically, the ones you use to tap into the hive system that controls the elf Guard. That's what I am doing."
The Monitor was aware she should do a whole lot of things right now, her thoughts were crystal clear on the subject .... yet all she did was sit down again.
"You're actually quite a pampered person. You can just magically break your link to anyone who is in too much pain before it affects you. I'll never have that privilege." Rokuna continued, more talking to herself than to the elf.
"I guess that I should have known. If it really was possible to be linked to someone without perceiving their pain, someone in the past thousands of years would have discovered it already. It wouldn't be logical either, cause how is something like a mere energy going to be able to tell what signal to let through and what not?"
At that moment, Ruth popped up.
"Oh, hi Ruth." Rokuna casually said.
"Hey kid, what are you doing?" the imp asked curiously.
"Mentally manipulating someone to our advantage. It's disappointingly easy. She's a pillow princess!"
"Well, can you hurry it up? Our guys are in a pinch."
"They'll manage." Rokuna said drowsily, only little surprised as her own indifference.
"What the heck? You need to tell those elves to back off!"
"I can't just do that so easily. There's what, thirty of them? I can't control so many sane minds at once even if I impersonate her. Unless .... "
Maybe I just fear the pain I'll cause them and so me as well. How selfish.
She dug deeper into the mind of the Monitor, seeking material for a lie she could tell the dark elves.
The Monitor at this point had become quite unresponsive, her eyes focused vaguely on the fluttering imp and not feeling inclined to do anything.
"Ruth, tell them to teleport to the park as soon as the guards spread in a wide circle. I'm having the Monitor tell them to follow a specific maneuver, they've got under a minute to go unseen."
"Gotcha."
· · · · · · ·
The soldier noticed first something was up when their pursuers backed off.
"They're spreading out and are evoking a wide rokumon. Bad news." he said.
"Good news." Ruth popped up aside of Pegasus, only to disappear out of sight at once.
"Dangit!" He teleported again to catch up, this time holding onto the white manes. "Now land right away, make a rokumon, go to the park."
"Don't do that, it's crazy! I don't know what spell they're starting but it's the worst time to land right now. We should try to reach the upper part of the city!" the soldier objected.
"No, too long a distance and-"
"Rokuna says you've got about a minute." Ruth interrupted.
"She is behind this? But how?"
"Mindscrewing the Monitor or something." Ruth said with a shrug and disappeared again.
Pegasus circled a nearby empty terrace and landed, Mondo had leaped off before the horse even stood still and projected a rokumon, recalling the location of the park. Once he had enough energy, the gate expanded enough for Pegasus to pass, burning up that last bit of the crayon.
They appeared again in the sky a short distance from the park. Pegasus dove down and folded his wings before he reached the trees, first he jumped into gallop to catch his momentum, then continued in a canter only to stop at a clearing.
The soldier hopped off at once, suspiciously looking around for an ambush.
"Thank you, my friend." Mondo said as he petted Pegasus' nose. "I'll teleport you back now."
Pegasus wearily looked at Mondo's company. "- I'd rather not leave you alone with that person. -" he said quietly.
"- It will be fine, Zaha and Shiru-san are here. Besides, I won't have you involved any further than absolutely necessary, you already risked so much for me back there. -"
"- Anytime. Good luck with your mission, Mondo. -"
Mondo smiled. "Thank you." he said once more. He teleported Pegasus back, a vague memory coming up from long ago and brighter days when all they worried over was getting Valkyrie toddlers back home. He then turned to soldier.
With Pegasus gone, the man seemed to figure they were out of danger for now and he said :"This is the point where you tell why you got me out of there."
"You have information that we need."
A scornful laughter was the answer. "And you hope to torture it out of me or something? You don't look like you're part of any group that even so much as has the skills needed for that."
"We won't need to hurt you." Mondo said. "In fact, once this is all over, we'll just let you go."
"Riiiiiight." But the words of the imp were on his mind; who ever this Rokuna was, he'd rather avoid them.
"What else would we do?" Mondo asked honestly.
"You'd let me go to kill another day? You seemed pretty upset when I started massacring those elves."
Mondo was taken aback by that.
"Never seen so much blood, have you?" the man continued.
"Actually, .... I have. It's the reason I'm here in fact."
"Let me guess, a Vujad group killed your village and you and your band of heroes are trying to find the one that led them and personally killed your parents? Always the same. Forget it, you moron. The Vujad have no more unity since the church disbanded us. Everyone of us is without name, at the most you'll get killed."
Mondo's fists clenched together, he felt tears biting again.
"I've also killed before, at least as part of a shared effort. Now it turned out that what I helped kill once hasn't fully died. That's also part of the reason I'm here."
The reason I'm here ....
It didn't take long for the soldier to put together the puzzle pieces. The child before him was referring to the Terror Dragon head which he had been hired to protect and the ones who killed that were ....
This time, his confusion did cost him vital reaction time.
A slightly woosh in the air behind him, then a hand grabbed him in the back of the neck harshly and forced him to his knees. The grip was like metal, he couldn't even look behind him to see who held him down.
"A Vujad Soldier?" said a surprised voice from behind.
"Hey, where are Rokuna-chan and Theta-san?" Mondo asked, noticing their absence.
"Theta we sent home, but Rokuna entered the station in order to confront the Monitor. She said that once she was inside she could physically hack their system." Zaha answered.
"Oh, that's what Ruth meant? It worked, but why hasn't she returned yet?"
He looked over to Shiru, remembering Rokuna had linked to her earlier for translation help, but she shook her head. But, no time for wondering.
"Watch out!" Mondo called, facing the direction the attack came from.
Zaha noticed too and caught the blade that came his way from the right. He threw back his attacker, not impressed enough yet to shed the disguising cloak yet.
"Knowing the Vujad, they had spies around the city and they can track each other by magic. How irritating." Zaha muttered. "Mondo, Ruth, stay close to Shiru."
Zaha hit his captive in the back of the neck, instantly knocking him out and drew his sword practically in the same motion. Shiru and Mondo backed against one of the larger trees to give him room.
While Zaha had never been one to eagerly kill, he had no issues with unfair fighting. Two more tried attacking him, one he threw headfirst into a tree while the more persistent second ended up with a broken arm.
They were merely testing him though before they attacked in a group. In a moment of unexpected skill, one of his attackers knocked his sword out of his hand and one of the larger soldiers managed to twist his arm behind his back at that very moment.
One of them mockingly said : "Just tricks. You aren't even remotely prepar—"
His words were cut short as from under Zaha's cloak his two wings appeared, knocking back all around him in one motion. The other soldiers drew back in fearful recognition. Now they know whom exactly they faced their collective response could effectively be summed up with : "We are so screwed".
Zaha was a bit peeved at once again having to fight in a tiny space and actually needing his wings in a ground-battle against humans. With all the trees he couldn't even use his fire here. Then again, that just might make it more interesting.
"Yes, definitely not prepared at all." he said with a fanged grin.
A somewhat panicked reply came : "Try this!" One of them threw a bomb but Ruth caught it, disappeared for a blink of an eye and returned without it. An explosion was heard somewhere in the distance.
"Don't worry, was an empty area." he said sheepishly. "I totally agree we're not prepared by the way." he then added in a mock desperate voice.
Another combined wave attack came, which he deflected as well. Vujad weren't much of a challenge for a full fledged demon without their bombs and even as advanced humans they lacked the physical strength to cut through his armor.
Zaha pinned one jumping soldier's head between a tree and two outstretched fingers, forming a small Black Photon between his remaining fingers.
"This could have been less painful if you people just sat still." he said before electrocuting him.
The soldier spasmed a moment before dropping unconscious to the ground. Zaha warded of the next attack from the right, but from the corner of his eyes noticed that the unconscious soldier was removed by one of the others. This was strange, knowing the Vujad's values .... or their lack there off. Someone apparently was eager to keep things secret.
At that moment, a white gate opened and Rokuna hopped out, only looking vaguely worried. There was no surprise on her face and she said nothing when Mondo called her name happily.
Rokuna quickly went over the auras. Most of these soldiers were already linked to someone, if ever so mildly. She had no mind for another psychic confrontation and focused on the single one that wasn't under one of these willing contracts. He was knocked out at the moment, making it all the easier.
"Zaha, please keep them back, I need to concentrate."
"No need to ask." he said casually and batted away an attacker from above with his wings, sending him crashing into another.
"Do be quick though, it's him they want back!"
Shiru then raised the Dark Voltage around her and the children the moment Rokuna was in range. There, the girl folded her arms to concentrate.
Vujad. A single eye that looked like drawn with Indian ink. It was behind everything in his mind.
First she noticed the confusion on her lack of establishing a contract. Then the resistance came, but he resisted the wrong thing, all she had to do was read his aura. With only his subconscious to object, it wasn't very difficult to get in tune.
Location, location .....
Yes, they had the dragon head, these people of the Vujad Tribe had been hired to protect the 'mission' since as humans they lacked the connections to tribes in the dark realm and they were disorganized, easier to control with money and most importantly, most of them lacked names. She couldn't quite tell why this was important though.
Then she learned something that troubled her greatly.
The Terror Dragon's head was alive. This man had seen it, a few images of it passed her mind, it was nauseating. Involuntarily she opened her eyes and raised a hand to her mouth, though she didn't throw up. The memories turned into a vision of the dragon as it voicelessly called for the now gone master that it hated yet needed.
A single eye here too, but this carried the red mask over it. She wanted to see no more, but pity held her mind's eye.
The way they kept it alive ....
Before she could fall any deeper, a rokumon flickered into existence under the soldier and blue hands dragged him through it. The whole thing happened too quickly for anyone to respond.
"- How regrettable that I have to come this far. Can't trust these humans to do their job one bit. -" Rokuna vaguely noticed someone say, apparently from out of that circle.
Then it was over.
The moment the soldiers saw their target was gone they all vanished, even taking along their injured. Zaha let them go, not seeing a need to pursue anyone, or rather, not wanting to leave his friends behind unguarded.
The wind may have howled a little the entire time, but only now did she hear it. Rokuna sank to her knees and heard herself breathe in the same rhythm.
"Rokuna-chan, are you alright?"
No.
She looked up at Mondo, his expression grew more worried when he recognized the same absent expression he had seen when they had visited Arash.
"Rokuna-chan?"
Suddenly she became irritable again, shrugging off his hand on her shoulder.
"Did you find it?" Zaha's question didn't register immediately.
"No .... "
"Then we're back at no leads." Shiru said softly.
"Not necessarily. Rokuna-chan, can't you still try to link with that guy?"
She shook her head.
"I can't sense him anymore."
"Oh ... well, too bad. I guess you only had a short link. It's o—"
"That's not it. They killed him." Her voice was barely audible.
Only now her tears came.
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