Phase 23.9
I waited outside the interrogation room with bated breath. Every few minutes I'd catch my head falling, eyes closing, and then jolt back awake. I hadn't slept at all the past night. After apprehending Daryl the other Rooks showed up and towed him away in the back of a truck where he could be closely watched all the way back to headquarters. They were a bit surprised to see that I was the one that took him down, even if I did have a lot of assistance from Tsugumi. My reputation definitely raised a few notches, then. Ever since, I'd been back at headquarters, waiting as the team woke Daryl up and started questioning him. Of course I wanted to know what he could tell us about Da'ath, but what kept me awake was wondering about the other man he spoke to, the blue-haired Gai. Was it really him I saw? Yes, Tsugumi saw it, too. But he was still different, somehow. I knew he could never be the Gai I loved even if it was him at all, but because my heart was invested at one point in time, I still wanted to understand the truth about him.
As dawn approached outside Shibungi finally came out of the room and stopped before me, a hand on his chin, expression puzzled.
"How'd it go?" I asked.
"We aren't certain. He spoke too easily. Perhaps we finally got some of the answers we've been looking for, perhaps a lot of lies, or worse, a lot of bait to lure us into some kind of trap. I will need to make a proper report on this and bring it to the team for investigation, to be sure—we'll consider his information false unless proven true."
"I'm ready," I tried to salute, but clumsily knocked myself in the head in the process.
"No, you're not," Shibungi corrected. "You've done enough for one night, Ayase. Go home and get some rest, and don't return for the rest of the day until after normal lunch hours. That's an order."
"Yes s—"
"You're too late!" Daryl's voice emanated through the interrogation room walls. "The assault on Camp Makishi will have already begun by now!"
Maniacal laughter followed. I expected Shibungi to respond with some urgency, but instead he retained his thoughtful pose and wondered aloud:
"Openly divulging such information to the enemy...only you, Tsutsugami Gai."
He then reached up to one ear and pressed a button on a device he was wearing.
"This is Shibungi. Mobilize the defense force for Camp Makishi, on the double. Your priority is to protect Ouma Shu and Ouma Inori. Expect heavy resistance from armed terrorists. This is a Code Three operation, I repeat: a Code Three operation. This will be our first chance to fight Da'ath face-to-face—let's make it count."
He lowered his hand and looked back at me.
"Excuse me, Ayase. If Yan even knows of Camp Makishi then he makes no idle threat. It would seem I have some business to attend to...and that our interrogations are not yet finished."
He departed, leaving me feeling very uncertain of what to do.
"I'm supposed to go home and take a nap after that?"
I seriously considered disobeying and heading straight for my station, but between Shibungi's insistence and my own fear that I'd make major errors if I tried to work in my current state of mind, I gritted my teeth and went home. Even though there was no possible way I could help in the interrogation up in the capital or get in an Endlave and down to Makishi in time to fight, I always hated accepting my own limitations.
"You've got me for now, but I'm going to bring you down one day, Da'ath. You just mark my words."
GC
Ouma Shu
The soft tones of a piano reached my ears as I wandered about Camp Makishi, looking for Inori. I had an especially rough night with Mana, and so I slept in quite a bit once the nightmares finally subsided. Apparently Inori got up alone and just left me to wake up on my own schedule.
The music got louder as I stepped inside the empty dinner hall, where soldiers would often entertain each other with music. Not when they were training or on duty, though—this had to be someone else playing. I drew nearer and saw Inori sitting at the piano, playing and softly singing one of the songs we wrote together. I stood silently in the doorway and waited until she was finished to make my presence known. Then I clapped, and she turned around, surprised.
"I didn't know you could play."
"Only a little."
"No," I said, walking over and taking Inori into my arms, "you were wonderful."
Her cheeks turned slightly red. We leaned in towards each other, but just before our lips met, a loud noise shook the entire camp. Sirens followed, coupled with shouts and gunfire from several directions.
"Shu!" Terror filled Inori's eyes.
"Stay close! And get down!"
We ducked under a table and I covered Inori. And while I didn't say anything about it, I also produced a crystal shield across my back, thin enough that it wouldn't be noticeable through my clothes.
"Shu? What's going on?"
"I don't know. Just hold on to me. It will be alright."
I took her false hand in mine and there we waited, listening to the horrific sounds of war which overtook the camp so suddenly. A few stray shots pierced holes in the dining hall walls, but none reached Inori or me. It seemed an eternity, but eventually the noise outside died down just as quickly as it had begun. Too quickly.
"Shu? Is it—"
"Shh!"
I cautiously backed up and peeked my head over the table. All was still. A rotten, smoky scent filled the air.
"I think we're—"
My sentence was interrupted by all the windows around the dining hall bursting in at once, followed by soldiers in black uniforms and cloth masks with strange designs. They pointed their weapons at me and waited while the tallest one—a man with long, cyan hair—slowly approached with his hands folded calmly behind his back. I didn't raise my hands in surrender, but I also didn't dare make any sudden moves. I heard Inori trying to get up behind me.
"Stay down, Inori!"
She didn't listen, and clung to my side. Thankfully the terrorists held their fire.
"Ouma Shu-kun," the tall man said, his voice oddly familiar. "For how long did you think you could hide yourself?"
I made no response.
"The power of Cocytus calls to us," he continued. "Day and night we hear its anguished cry. You've done well in awakening its power, but that is not enough. The day of the Final Apocalypse draws nigh, yet still there is so much to be done—so much you need to learn. But for now..."
He raised a hand and the soldiers redirected their aim.
"...the execution of your partner will do. Yuzuriha Inori—or is it Ouma Inori, now? No matter. She has surrendered Cocytus to you and therefore we have no further use for her."
"You will not touch Inori." It wasn't a demand, it was a statement of a fact made real by sheer force of will.
"Hmph," was all the blue-haired man had to say. He lowered his hand and left it pointing right at Inori. She bravely refused to move, though I desperately wished she would. A moment later the terrorists opened fire, sending bullets Inori's way from several directions.
"Hyyaaaa!" I shouted, pouring all of my strength into manifesting crystals from my hands. Each spike I produced shot out and stopped a bullet in mid air, fast creating a complicated web of spikes that was so heavy I had to allow the crystals to crawl up to my elbows for support. Inori covered her mouth and watched in shock.
Eventually the terrorists realized they weren't going to get any shots through and stopped firing. I let all the crystals shatter in their place, dropping the bullets to the floor along with them. From there I immediately extended a spike from each arm to be wielded like a sword and started swinging, shouting again the whole while. I jabbed the two closest soldiers in their necks and then swung to knock the others' weapons from their hands, since they were too far away for me to do more damage right away. The tall man had no weapon to begin with, but he demonstrated an incredible amount of agility in dodging my attacks as I moved forward. His reactions were inhumanly fast. I stabbed, and he butterfly-kicked right over the spike and out of the way, sending a heavy boot into my face in the process. Blood gushed from my nostrils, but I ignored it and charged forward again, this time swinging both spikes in an X to prevent him from pulling the same stunt twice. Not perturbed, my blue-haired opponent did a handspring backwards onto a table behind him and leaped back onto his feet, holding up the table to block my attack just in the nick of time. The spikes left a dent but shattered on the impact, so I broke them off and produced two more. The terrorist leader tried to use the table as a battering ram and shove me over, but I anchored my feet into the ground with more crystals and didn't budge under his incredible strength. I managed to push forward, leaping from my crystal foundation, but rather than knock him over the conflicting forces on the table just knocked it off to the side. He was defenseless. I quickly swung for the man's head, but to my surprise he dematerialized into thin air. My arm continued its motion, however, and the spike swung around behind me and nicked the man across the face as he came back into form. I turned around to see what damage I'd done just in time to watch the cloth mask, now torn in half, fall to the ground, revealing the terrorist's face. I froze in position, stunned.
"Gai?" I stared in disbelief.
The blue-haired Gai scowled back at me and promptly punched me in the gut, then the chin, then again in the head. I fell hard to the ground, unable to move. My vision faded fast. At the other end of the room I saw that Inori had retrieved one of the other terrorist's rifles and started firing, but she only took down one man before another yanked the weapon from her grasp and knocked it straight into her face.
"I...nori..." I reached out towards her with the little strength left in me just before I took another blow to the head, and all the world went black.
GC
I first came back to while laying on a cold, hard, and slightly wet surface. My vision was blurry, and I couldn't think straight, much less move. A barred door closed in front of me with a clang, followed by several electronic beeps. Someone in a set of boots and a trench coat stood outside. Mustering all my strength I rolled my head back just enough to see a blur of cyan at the top of the person before me.
"Gai..."
Someone else in a white lab coat approached.
"Izanagi-sama! The tests are complete. Shall we—"
"He's not strong enough yet. However, he seems easily provoked when his partner is threatened. Put her in the cell across from him."
"With all due respect, Izanagi-sama, are you certain that is wise?"
"I fought him myself. He'll do just fine."
The two walked off, still talking, and before long I could fight unconsciousness no more and drifted back into an unnatural slumber.
My eyes shot open again some time later. I had no idea what day it was, what time it was, or where I was, and I had only foggy memories of waking up earlier. But at least this time I was alert, and I knew I'd been drugged before. That meant two things to me: I was a captive, and I needed to escape. Instead of laying on the floor, I was now sitting on an uncomfortable plank of wood pretending to be a bench, and my hands were chained to the wall behind my back. I leaned forward as far as I could to see outside the bars of my tiny cement cell, but as expected nothing helpful drew my eye. However, at the sound of my clanking chains there was a bit of motion across from me. A face looked up from the shadows of the opposite cell.
"Inori!"
"Shu!"
"Are you hurt?"
"I'm...fine."
There was a large bruise across one side of her face. I supposed my body had similar marks—it certainly hurt in enough places.
"Do you remember anything?" I asked.
She shook her head, then replied with a question of her own.
"Do you think we're at Da'ath?"
"I...I think so. I saw Gai—at least, it looked like him—talking with a whitecoat outside my cell. I can't remember what they were saying, though. I'm pretty sure we were drugged."
"What are we going to do, Shu?"
I gritted my teeth and focused my thoughts on the chains around my wrists. A few seconds later I felt crystals forming, starting inside the handcuffs and pushing outward until the thick metal bent enough for me to withdraw the crystals and slip my hands out. Then I got to work on the cell. Inori watched in disbelief as I took hold of two iron bars and crystals formed around my hands and up the door.
"Shu? W-what is that?"
I pulled back with all my might and the crystals snapped a few bars right off the door, leaving a big enough space for me to crawl through.
"A way out."
Inori's expression saddened as I repeated the process on her cell.
"Is this...because I took your Guilty Crown?" she asked. "Is that Mana's power?"
I paused before ripping her cell open.
"How'd you know?"
"I once fought GHQ using the same abilities that you have, now. I didn't want you to see because I was afraid you'd think I was a monster."
I tore the bars off and threw them down on the floor, then climbed in beside Inori and worked on her chains.
"I knew you were blind before because of the trade, but somehow it never occurred to me that you'd get Mana too. Shu, I'm so sorry!"
"It's fine. What you did wasn't perfect, but we wouldn't be together now if not for you trading our fates. I wouldn't have survived Shangri-la, and you wouldn't have survived Mana. It's better this way. Don't worry: Mana can't do anything to me."
The chains broke off of Inori's hands and she immediately embraced me. I could feel her heart beating hard in her chest.
"I'm sorry for not telling you sooner," I stroked her silky hair with my real hand, "you were just so happy when we got married, I didn't want to ruin everything for you. And before that, well...I suppose I was a little bit worried you wouldn't want to marry me if you knew I had Mana."
Inori grabbed my face to stop me talking and kissed me on the lips.
"I want to be with you always, Shu! No matter what's inside you."
We embraced again.
"Let's go home, Inori."
"Do you know the way out?"
"No, but I'll break through anything and anyone that tries to stop us from getting there—for your sake, and for everyone back home. If this really is Da'ath's place, all we have to do to find them is see where we are when we get outside. If we can report that to Shibungi, Da'ath's whole operation is as good as finished."
Inori nodded.
"You ready?"
Another nod.
"Ok. Then let's go!"
We headed down the hall and I used crystals to break the lock and hinges on the door at the end. It took both of us pushing to break it free, but then it creaked, slid a bit, and slammed downward—right on top of a guard who'd been standing on the other side. Inori and I stumbled forward into the next room, a fairly large area with several extremely shocked and puzzled armed guardsmen.
"They've escaped!" one of them yelled, raising his rifle.
The others in the room responded in kind, putting Inori and I at gunpoint a dozen or so times over. Inori thought fast and swiped up the fallen guard's rifle while I prepped a spike from each arm. A moment later the room was a bed of chaos. Bullets flew everywhere as guards and Inori fired and dodged one another's shots. I ran around cutting shells out of the air before they could hit me and following up with a spike through the attacker. With one guard still impaled on a spike I spun around and used his bulletproof armor as a shield for myself before breaking off the spike and shoving the body into another guard to knock him down. I smashed his fallen weapon but decided to let him live unless he tried to fight further. The others were not so lucky—my moves had drawn enough attention away from Inori that she was able to land a hit on three of them before they had a chance to react. The remaining three men immediately turned and opened fire on her, but she rolled off to one side and nimbly popped back up onto her feet to return fire, forcing them to stop and dodge. Only that meant they moved closer to me, so I swept one's feet out from under him with a thick spike on my left hand and then blocked with a spike on my right as another guard's gun came down on me like a club. Inori ran up and beat him in the back of the head with her rifle while our weapons were still locked, and then I spun around to let him fall and simultaneously jabbed one of my spikes out behind me, running the final guard through without even looking. The fight was finished, Inori and I standing back-to-back, the decisive victors. She traded her empty rifle for another while I swiped a key card from one of the guards and opened a new door with it. Thankfully no one awaited us on the other side—just an empty hallway of more doors to choose from. We tore through the hallway as fast as our legs would carry us, hand in hand to make sure we'd never be separated.
"Umm, this way," I guessed, turning us off into another hall. The door at the end of the row looked different than the others, so I thought perhaps it would be a way out. Instead, we barged straight through to find ourselves in the facility's Endlave garage—and many of the Endlaves were active.
"What the—!?" one pilot's voice echoed over his loudspeaker.
"Sorry, wrong way."
"Shu!?"
"Hang on, Inori!"
I took her up in my right arm and focused hard on my left to produce the longest crystal spike I'd made yet. To my relief, I succeeded to make it sturdy enough not to fall apart from its own weight, and thus inspired I charged forwards at the Endlaves as they took aim. I swung as hard as I could, and the crystal sliced through the first machine like butter. The second was too far away to be caught in the destruction, however, and started raining fire upon Inori and I. I dropped the spike in favor of creating a shield, and simultaneously anchored my left foot to the ground so I could jump off the crystal foundation and dodge behind another active Endlave. As I hoped, the first pilot kept firing at me as I ran, and eventually started shooting his ally by mistake.
"What are you doing, you idiot!?" the pilot cried.
Unfortunately for him, the Endlave took too much damage and shut down before the bullets stopped flying. But by now my presence in the garage was well known, and other Endlaves were gathering to join the hunt too—though a bit more judiciously than their colleague. My mind exploded with activity as I took advantage of the damaged Endlave by launching myself into the air with a rising pillar of crystals under my feet and then coming back down on it with another long spike between my hands. The Endlave split in half with enough force to send the broken pieces flying into other Endlaves, which caused all three machines to explode on the spot. The blast knocked Inori and me over, but she had more time to react than I did and performed a somersault, finishing on one knee in perfect position to fire on the Endlave pilot that took down his partner. With a few shots to the eyes the machine malfunctioned, and after several more to the head, it too shut down. By then I was back on my feet, so I swept Inori back into my arms and ran forward into the remaining rows of Endlaves, towards a funicular at the end of the garage.
"Grraaaaa!"
My long spike came back, and I sliced through any Endlave that got in my way, never even turning to watch it fall down and trip up the others in its path. When we reached the elevator I let go of Inori, who took my keycard and started the giant lift while I produced another shield, large and thick enough to cover much of the funicular. The crystals slowly chipped and cracked as hundreds of bullets tested their resilience, and we just barely pulled up and out of the Endlave's firing range before the entire shield shattered.
"Whew," I sagged to the floor.
"Shu, you're bleeding!" Inori rushed over and checked my neck and left hand.
"Only a little. I got grazed a couple times, that's all."
"We're not out of this yet. Please Shu, be more careful."
"Are you hurt anywhere?"
She shook her head.
"Then these mean nothing to me. I'd have taken the bullets too, to get you home. I didn't rescue you from that tower just so you could get shot by Da'ath here. Maybe it sounds like I'm being foolish, but it's how I feel. I hated myself for not being able to protect you before. I won't let it happen this time. I won't!"
The funicular came to a halt and we stood up only to face a giant Endlave unlike anything I'd ever seen before. It was twice as wide and significantly taller than the ones we fought a moment ago, and to further set it apart it was entirely purple, whereas the others were white. The machine activated and loudly stomped into position.
"Going somewhere?" the pilot taunted us.
Inori shot at the Endlave's head, but the bullets ricocheted without noticeable damage. The pilot stepped forward. I produced a spike and threw it like a spear, but it simply shattered on impact. Another step towards us, this time accompanied by viscous laughter. One of the machine's arms raised and started firing. I dove in front of Inori and produced a shield, but this Endlave's bullets were stronger than the others, and the crystals were torn to shreds in seconds. Inori and I ran behind a stack of crates, but before long those were destroyed as well.
"Come on, stop hiding, you little rats!"
With one more shot the topmost crate was toppled, leaving Inori and I completely exposed. The Endlave's other arm went up and promptly fired a huge missile straight for us.
"Nooo!" I screamed, grounding my feet with crystals.
I leaned forward and poured all my energy at the missile. Crystals emanated from both hands and joined in the middle to form a solid pillar which continued forwards until it encased the huge projectile and stopped it in midair. I was so shocked to see it work that for a moment I didn't know what else to do, but then I spun around and released the crystals, hurling the missile back at its source. It exploded on the giant Endlave, breaking off the machine's missile arm without shutting it down entirely.
"Shu! Go for the arm!" Inori ordered before running away from me, firing her rifle all the way.
I hated how the diversion put Inori at risk, but it worked, and motivated me to end the fight quickly before she could be hurt. I ran forward and crystals grew under my feet like a staircase until I was eye level with the big Endlave. With both hands together I encased the fallen arm in crystal and then swung it over my head to crush the Endlave with its own body—the only thing strong enough to deal significant damage. It stumbled back, arm protruding from the front, and eventually fell against the wall before totally exploding. Inori and I were blackened a bit from the resulting debris, but neither one of us had any serious injuries. What's more, the explosion conveniently blew a hole in the wall, revealing a strange subterranean passage outside. We still had a long way to go to get home, that much was for certain, but the significance of what just transpired didn't escape us—not by a long shot. We'd just beat Da'ath at their own game, and now we were finally free.
Author's notes: I tell ya, there's just no good way to split up the rest of this story. So get used to the abrupt endings, I guess. Of course, there's only a few chapters left to go. Last time I guessed there would be three more chapters including this one, but I actually might give Ayase one more full chapter to wrap up her sidestory with Daryl, so that would mean three more after this one instead. Either way, we're getting there!
As of today it's been exactly 3 weeks since I started this fanfic, and already it's got 1,100+ views! That's pretty amazing to me, since this is my first fanfic and all. This whole experience has been awesome and it's become such a part of my routine that part of me doesn't really believe it will be over in another week or two, but all good things must come to an end, and honestly this is one thing that will be very satisfying to wrap up. Thanks for sticking with me this far, but don't tune out now!
