Chapter 21
High in the mountaintops overlooking the blazing forest where the wind howled with the agony of a thousand dead souls, a lone woman stood with a pair of binoculars in hand. She was a woman not born of China, who stood as stiff as a board in her native, ceremonial attire. Strong shoulders decorated with luminescent markings identified her rank and worth, and every piece of her uniform was pristine, polished, and neatly kempt.
With a smug smile, she peered down into the mayhem where Axel single-handedly thrust himself into the mob of Heartless. Hundreds of Shadows fell on him accompanied by a variety of different breeds. Though he struggled at first, Axel slowly progressed away from the cliff and carved himself a path into the heart of the fire. With a loud pop the centermost flames were absorbed into him, leaving nothing but smoke in its wake. Fueled by the extra boost, Axel streamlined through the Heartless forces, absorbing any and all stray flames in his path to further propel him along his path of destruction.
"Well, well; this is most unexpected," she mused with a smirk. "What kind of data will you provide me with, I wonder?" The woman lowered her binoculars and replaced them with a pair of spectacles. "You could be just the one I need." She turned around and snapped her fingers.
Two soldiers rushed out from the bushes and saluted her. "Yes, Lieutenant Colonel!"
The woman folded her hands behind her back, giving them the once-over. The soldiers were each clad in a high-tech armor built with technology from another world. Tubes branched out from the facial nozzle and looped around their helmets, and large, glowing optic lens concealed their eyes. They held their firearms at their sides as they stood at attention awaiting their orders.
"I trust we can begin the second testing phase of Project Amalgam."
"Yes, ma'am!" replied one of the soldiers. "Subject Manticore has been tagged and collared. The injection unit is on standby awaiting your command."
"Excellent." She ran a cunning hand through her long hair, which flowed behind her like a cape. "Prepare to mobilize."
"Ma'am!" The soldiers saluted once more before about-facing and charging off into the bushes.
"Now, Mr. Fire Man," said the Lieutenant Colonel while raising her binoculars once more, "show me the darkness that falls after the last ember of humanity dies."
In the clearing devoured by the insatiable flames, Axel stood at a standstill. His feet slid across the ash that covered the charred land as he tried to maintain an advantage over the burgeoning Heartless forces. But it was no use. A thick blanket of darkness enveloped the dead forest, and with the last of the fire absorbed to keep Axel standing tall, the only flicker of light came from the piercing, yellow eyes that surrounded the lone warrior.
"I hate to say it, Cricket, but looks like this is the end of the line," Axel said while darting his head from side to side in futile attempt to find an open path. The Heartless drew nearer. Claws, fangs, hooves, and various weapons at the ready to tear their prey limb from limb and divide amongst themselves what little fragments of a heart they could. The size of the heart was inconsequential to the Heartless, for a prize is a prize no matter how big, small, or complete.
"There must be something we can do!" From Axel's shoulder, Jiminy looked around for a tree to climb or thicket to escape into and hide. But nothing remained upon the scorched earth save for a few burnt stalks of bamboo that leveled as the wind carried away their ashes.
"Face it; it's over." Axel extended chakrams to either side of himself as far as his arms would stretch. "Cricket, it's been all fun and dandy having you camp out in my ear canal, but the free ride's over. Time for you to hit the road."
"What are you saying? You can't give up!"
"We're in what used to be one of the largest patches of green I've ever seen and this army's practically covering every inch of it! Imagine what'll happen after they off the two of us and march after Sora. The kid'll be dead fifteen times before he hits the ground! No way I'm letting that happen. There's only one way to kill these punks, and it involves the biggest bang of them all!"
Jiminy's jaw quivered as he watched the fire blazing in Axel's eyes channel out into his torso and arms. "You're not suggesting—you're not going to…?"
"Cricket, you'd best start running now if you want to make it out alive!"
"For Walt's sake, don't do it! There has to be another way! Don't—AXEL, NO!"
It was too late. Jiminy up and threw his top hat and umbrella away in panic as the ground opened from under Axel's feet and spat out the flames of Hell itself to circle round the barren field.
"You pathetic, worthless peons! I'll show you why they called me The Flurry of Dancing Flames!" Axel burst out into psychotic laughter as his pure lifeforce bled out to sear clean through his foes. The shadows melted from the blazing might of his soul's eternal flame. The dead forest crackled with the explosion of a million flames, and Axel felt a piece of himself dissolve into each new erupting flame. Despite the sweltering intensity of the fire, Axel never felt so cold.
Jiminy clung onto dear life while shouting for Axel to cease and desist, but his words fell on deaf ears. After the initial explosion of flames, Axel bent his knees and sprung forward for the killing blow. He blasted through shadows at full speed, but before he could leap into the air and surge back down with the force of an atomic bomb, a loud horn sounded off and heralded the war cry of the Imperial Army.
Thousands of horses flooded onto the battlefield, slaughtering the Heartless and carving a path straight to Axel. The centaurs rushed to meet the occasion, knocking soldiers to the ground while tackling or spearing their steeds. Puddles of Neoshadows pooled under the newcomers and emerged to take them unawares. Men were cleaved by spears, trampled by hooves, immolated by corrupted flames, and impaled by razor claws. Hundreds of soldiers lay scattered across the field as lifeless as the earth beneath them, yet still the army fought with swords and shields at the ready as a storm of arrows plummeted from the sky. The Heartless forces fell into sharp decline, and soon, they disappeared altogether from the forest, leaving the Imperials victorious.
With the last of the Shadows dispersed, General Li cantered towards Axel with sword extended. A proud and decorated hero, General Li sat straight on his mighty white steed, hand reaching up to stroke the thin, black beard ringed around his mouth. He studied Axel with a keen, piercing gaze, taking note of his haggard breathing and battered body. "You are not of this world," he stated.
Axel let out a weak laugh. "What gave me away?"
"The hair, the eyes, the clothes—take your pick," replied the General. "And by the looks of your battle scars, I'd say you are no ally to the Heartless. Might you then be affiliated with the Resistance?"
"What a brilliant deduction," Axel rasped. Even half dead, he still clung to his sarcasm.
General Li sheathed his sword and pulled a sacred, golden vial from his satchel, dropping it into Axel's lap. "The Emperor owes much to your Ambassador Paine. Consider this reimbursement for her services."
"So glad we could be friends," Axel crooned as he uncorked the vial with his mouth and downed its contents. Within seconds, his rekindled inner flame singed the cold hand of death that was tugging at his soul.
"You'll need to report to Xiao Gen," said the General. "This Heartless infestation has the potential to tip the scales of war in the Hun's favor, and that is something we cannot allow."
Axel stood upright and brushed the ash from his clothes. "I remember that name; he's that liaison Cid was babbling about."
"He is head councilor and strategist to the Emperor for all Heartless-related matters. You are most fortunate that his current assignment has him stationed at a nearby military installation to the south. Your journey is not but a day's ride from here."
"It's the best place to wait for Sora," Jiminy whispered after recovering his fallen paraphernalia and resituating himself on Axel's shoulder. "He'll be searching for Gen, too, after all."
"All right," Axel nodded. "Point the way."
General Li turned to signal one of his soldiers, who then escorted a horse to the front. "Ling Gong was a soldier," the General said in a stern tone peppered with admiration and mourning. He stroked the horse as he continued to speak. "He would want Qiong here to continue serving to honor his memory." Letting his hand fall to the reins, he guided Qiong towards Axel. "I trust you know how to ride?"
"I've had some crazy practice," Axel jibed while unconsciously massaging his lower back where the centaurs had trampled him. He mounted the horse in one go and adjusted himself on the saddle several times to find his balance. At first, he hunched too far and became conscious of his posture when the surrounding soldiers began to snicker and murmur amongst themselves as reached for the reins. Centaurs made for poor horse riding practice, he realized, and he forced himself to sit with back straight like the General.
"To reach the camp, just follow the nearby river south," said the General, pointing Axel in the right direction.
"Will do." Not knowing exactly how to get his horse to start moving, Axel tugged and whipped the reins as if he were a taffy puller on the boardwalk, earning another round of chuckles from the soldiers until Qiong finally started cantering away…in the wrong direction. "Stupid horse," Axel grumbled as he pulled the reins and somehow managed to spin himself southbound.
"I've been meaning to ask you," Jiminy said while reviewing his journal. "Why didn't you use the mega-potion you had purchased?"
"It's not mine to use."
"You purchased it; of course it's yours to use!"
"I bought it for Sora. Never had the chance to give it to him."
Qiong suddenly came to a stop, and Jiminy used the opportunity to jump onto Axel's nose and look him square in the eye. "There are a million other potions where that came from, but there's only one you!"
"Look, ten extra seconds of an energy boost wasn't going to make much of a difference against an army of cutthroat Heartless! Now quit your yapping unless you want to bite your tongue clean off!" Axel whipped the reins, but Qiong refused to budge. "The heck's wrong with you?" He tried again, this time jabbing his feet into the horse's sides, but Qiong remained stock-still.
"Maybe he's just as concerned about your poor choices as your conscience is!" Jiminy huffed.
"I seriously doubt that."
They hadn't even cleared through the troops yet when Qiong decided to stop. He grunted and neighed, and when Axel tried yet again to spur him forward, he jumped with fright on his hind legs, nearly chucking Axel clean off his back.
"What the hell?" Axel managed to steady the horse long enough to catch a glimpse of distant group of soldiers quelling their own spooked steeds before falling dead in the dirt. The soldiers toppled like dominoes, parting the way for a most horrid sight.
A single, deranged man with a twisted, howling laugh stormed his way through the troops. He killed everything in his path with his bare hands, which were blacker than the Devil's hooves with pointed fingers sharpened like knives that pierced clean through the armored men and carved out their still-beating hearts. Speckled with the blood of their riders, the once white horses galloped away scared as the crazed man trudged forward, his yellow eyes as wild as an untamed beast's. He wore but a single, ragged loincloth and a few stray, scraggly hairs wisped around his blacked head. The rest of his body was riddled with pus-filled holes punctured into him by various gauged syringes. His neck proved the most eye-catching in that encased snugly around it was a large collar that flashed with a series of white and blue lights.
"What in Walt's name happened to that man?" Jiminy gasped, his eyes as wide as saucers.
Axel didn't answer; his attention focused on the commanding shouts of General Li spurring his men into action. He watched as the soldiers regrouped and mobilized, charging head-on at the enemy with swords drawn. The battle horn sounded off giving prelude to the rallying cries of the soldiers. They threw themselves at the psychotic killer, barring his escape and pummeling him with an endless stream of attacks. Many suffered a painful demise, but the sheer number of oncoming soldiers soon overpowered the solitary man as they buried him in a dog pile of their largest and most muscular men.
Silence befell the battlefield, and Axel watched the mountain of men with narrowed, unblinking eyes. He counted the seconds in his head: One…two…three…four…five…
YARGH!
The psychotic killer—a small and bowed man with little muscle on his bones—threw the soldiers from off his person, scattering them in every cardinal direction with a sickening, howler laughter that scraped at Axel's heart. The collar around his neck flashed several times until it settled on a steady, electric blue. Not long after, the man began to heave deep, strained breaths as his chest grew with each push and pull of the lungs. He hunched all the more, his sadistic laughter morphing into a rumbling growl as his blackened hands touched the ground. His body grew ten times its size, with newfound venous muscles bulging where there once were none. A stomach-churning crackling came from his disfiguring body as his bones snapped and cracked, mutating the man into an inhuman monstrosity. His body grew black as pitch and his eyes shined with an ungodly luminescent yellow. A scorpion-like tail flew out of his rear, impaling six soldiers and giving them instant death.
The monster roared and the soldiers charged. None were a match for the gruesome beast. Hundreds of soldiers threw themselves at the monster only to be clawed, chewed, or impaled. Some were stomped and flattened, while still others were torn to pieces.
"General, we must retreat!" cried one soldier before losing his head.
Unsheathing his sword, General Li grabbed the reins of his horse and shouted with all his might: "We must stop this wretched beast from reaching the Emperor! True men fight without fear! True men make the Middle Kingdom shudder with their vitality! Bring honor to yourself; bring honor to your family; bring honor to China!"
The General spurred his horse forward and charged into the chorus of war cries. He didn't wrestle long with the beast before its tail knocked him off his horse and its razor-sharp claws diced him to shreds. The General's dented helmet rolled out from under the beast and stopped near his bloodstained sword.
Where once thousands of soldiers stood tall and proud on the desecrated field now lay piles of battered bodies and warped metal. Some horses managed to flee, while others shared the fate of their riders. The army was decimated, leaving Axel the sole survivor. He didn't wait long to gallop away from the newfound graveyard. Scared out of his mind, Qiong sped out of the clearing as if the Devil himself were on his tail.
With a bone-chilling roar, the monster bounded after Axel, its hungry, forked tongue trailing out of its mouth. Soon, they were back in forested territory with long stalks of bamboo to limit their exposure. But the beast made short work of the obstacles in its path, striking them down with its tail to clear the way forward.
"Faster, go faster!" Jiminy cried.
"Not helping, Cricket!" Axel shot a quick glance backwards and saw that the beast was gaining on them. Snapping his fingers, Axel lit the surrounding flora ablaze to try and buy more time. But the monster charged headfirst through the firewall unfazed and picked up speed.
"Brace yourself!" Axel shouted, and Jiminy scrambled back into his ear canal just before the beast leaped through the air and landed smack in front of Qiong.
Qiong rose up high onto his hind legs, bucking Axel clean off and sending him flying into a bush. Before he could gallop away, however, the monster clawed him, piercing straight through his midsection and raising him up to its mouth. The monster chomped Qiong in half and discarded his remains.
"I'm gonna be sick," Axel spat as he summoned his chakrams. He kept his eyes trained on the monster as it stalked closer, bearing its venomous fangs and hovering its tail high in preparation for assault. It struck first, pouncing forward to claw at its prey, but Axel dodged it in time and counterattacked.
Fire augmenting his every attack, Axel turned the heat up high as he tried to scorch the vicious beast into submission. But its brutal force pounded into him and tossed him from side to side like a rag doll. He went flying in all directions, crashing into all sorts of trees and bamboo stalks while the beast remained virtually unscathed.
The battle drew on for a long time, with Axel focusing more on his agility than strength, hoping to wear the beast down and weaken its defenses. Every strategy failed, however. Axel wound up wearing down his own defenses moreso than his enemy's, and as his energy waned with each new bruise, cut, and strained muscle, his technique grew dangerously sloppy. One whip of the tail sent him packing into the dirt, where the beast loomed near with claw ready to strike.
The claw came down like a hammer, giving Axel no time to roll to safety. He instead brought up the arm still strapped with Goofy's shield up to absorb the impact. With an enraged howl, the beast pushed all of its weight to force its paw down, but Axel utilized the few second delay to start an exploding fire from under the beast's belly. It howled even louder as it retreated from the flames.
Axel rebounded to his feet and followed up with another fiery strike. He managed to knick the beast in its deformed, humanoid face, earning another sickening shriek from the ungodly creature as it lashed its tail to skewer its pesky prey. Axel again defended himself with the shield, parrying the tail and going in with another jab of the chakrams.
By now, the beast was more than annoyed. It caught Axel off-guard and slashed him upside the face, sparing no time in striking at him again and again. When Axel went to recover his balance, the beast whipped its tail intending to pierce straight through his chest. But Axel wobbled to the side, leaving his unshielded arm vulnerable. He let out a pain-filled cry as the scorpion-like tail skewered his bicep and pulled out to leave a messy wound and his arm defunct. The beast wasted no time in head-butting the wounded and disoriented warrior further into the forest and charging after him with fangs at the ready. It dove in to take a chomp out of Axel as he did Qiong.
Axel lay flat on his back, blinded by the excruciating pain surging up and down his injured limb. With gritted teeth, he tried to bite back the screams. The beast had knocked him back near a cliff overlooking a thicker forest. It was the end of the road, though he could hardly gain his bearings. He wanted to singe his wounds closed, but could barely gather the strength to do so. His vision began to blur, but with so little light in the nighttime forest, it made little difference.
When the piercing yellow fell upon him, however, he forced the pain away and focused only on the monster's eyes. The endgame neared; it was all or nothing. The beast leaped towards him with its mouth wide open. Thick saliva dripped from its crooked fangs as its jaw opened wider. It sped down like a missile, but then, something flew straight into its mouth just seconds before it could envelop Axel. The beast collapsed atop Axel, crushing him beneath it as it gagged and wheezed. The foreign object was lodged in its throat at a funny angle, impeding the flow of oxygen. Axel's howls of pain were drowned by the beast's guttural, hacking groans.
The beast tossed and rolled about, trying to cough up the obstruction in vain. It neared the edge of the cliff, and with one final, loud gasp, toppled clear over, taking Axel with it. They crashed into the trees below where the beast lay lifeless and Axel remained as equally motionless not more than a few paces away.
High above the scene, a hawk screeched as it eyed the devastation and flew off into the night.
Far to the north, there lay a village in ruins. Heartless danced on the graves of the fallen, and the Huns feasted and drank while huddled around a fire. What little livestock had remained after the raid was skewered and eaten, and the Huns enjoyed another victorious day of pillaging.
"When will we make for the Court?" said one Hun after biting the head off a chicken. "I'm tired of ransacking the smallfry!"
"I'm hungry for royal blood!" hissed another.
Shan Yu gave a devilish smirk, the fire illuminating his dark features. "Patience. The bounty will taste all the sweeter when you purify the fields before planting the new crops." At that moment, a hawk screeched and came to rest on his arm. "Ah, you've returned, Hayabusa."
Hayabusa screeched some more, cocking his head to the side and Shan Yu's features grew darker. His smirk caved in.
"That woman is here," said a Hun as he approached the fire from the lookout post.
Shan Yu rose to his feet and shoved him aside as the decorated Lieutenant Colonel approached him with a smug smile. Hayabusa cawed and took off to circle around the campsite from above.
"So this is where you've been," she said. "I thought you'd be slipping through the mountain pass by now."
"And I thought we had an understanding," said the snide leader as he drew nearer.
All fell silent as they watched the exchange. Two guards stood on either side of the Lieutenant Colonel armed with rifles while the Huns sat still, cradling what remained of their feast.
"Oh? And what, pray tell, was this understanding?"
"I hear you've been experimenting again," Shan Yu grabbed the Lieutenant Colonel by the throat, "on my men!"
The high-tech soldiers aimed their rifles. "Put her down, now!" they shouted, but Shan Yu's grip remained firm as his eyes blazed with satanic fire.
"Don't…be foolish…" gasped the Lieutenant Colonel as she tugged at the Hun's relentless hold. "Kill me, and you…kill your ambitions."
"We won't warn you again! Hands off!"
The Huns continued to watch as their leader kept the foreigner in a chokehold only to relinquish his grasp and turn his back. "Let this be a warning to you," he said upon signaling his men. They got to their feet, abandoning what little half-eaten foodstuffs they had to reach for their weapons as the high-tech guards continued to maintain their offensive stance. "We mutually benefited from the Wall's collapse, but now, our dealings are at an end. Touch my men again, and your head will garnish the table alongside the Emperor's."
Hayabusa streaked down to land on his master's arm once more and Shan Yu made to leave camp, followed by the others. They slowly pooled out of the demolished village and headed south, leaving the Lieutenant Colonel and her guards alone.
"Ma'am, are you sure it's wise to let him go? We can have the first battalion on them within minutes!"
The Lieutenant colonel straightened her uniform and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. "That won't be necessary," she replied with a cunning smile. "Let the fool dream of freedom while he can." She snapped her fingers, and one of the guards radioed in a helicopter. Climbing aboard with her entourage, the Lieutenant Colonel strapped herself in as the chopper took off in the opposite direction of the Hun army.
Taking out a small laptop computer, she signed into her account and booted up a telecommunications program. Within moments, a direct feed to Galenth Dysley opened up, and the dastardly old man sneered into the camera.
"You are late in your report, Colonel Nabaat."
"My apologies, Primarch," replied the Lieutenant Colonel as cool as ice. "There were some testing delays."
"I don't care for your excuses. I want results."
"Subject Manticore was a success," she stated. "Minimizing cognitive abilities for an optimization in primal brutality is a risky trade-off. However, it proves invaluable in settings with mass groups of opponents. The unpredictability of its actions heightens its destructive capabilities."
"Mass produce them at once."
"As you wish, sir."
"And the other?"
"The experiment is currently progressing. I'll have more to report on Subject Thoroughbred within the next few weeks."
"See that you do."
"Sir!" The Lieutenant Colonel gave a quick salute before Dysley cut the connection. She then closed the computer with care and crossed her legs, taking a glance out the window where the rising sun brought light to various fields of crops and greenery. "What a dirty world this is," she mused with utter contempt. "Amalgam will give it the purpose the gods never could."
A/N: Characters you may not know:
Lieutenant Colonel Jihl Nabaat - Final Fantasy XIII
General Li - Mulan