Chapter 29 – Flaming Ground

As soon as Kid skidded his skateboard to a stop the pair's smiles left their faces matching the rest of their team at the heart piercing sight before them. All that was left was a circle of land stripped of life, filled with ash, smoke, black. What used to be a village of thatched huts and home to 100 people was now only piles of burning wooden frames and electric orange ember swirling through the space amongst the paper thin grey flakes of ash rising with the black smoke. As the group walked into the destruction they remained silent as the foul stench of death choked them and the taste of burning harassed their tongues. The floor that was still partially on fire, was hot enough to get through the souls of their shoes and scorch their feet on each step. The sound of crackling echoed through the air merging with the crumbling earth. The flames burst and flickered ferociously with vibrant orange and yellow amongst the rubble, then they saw the body.

A little girl with beautiful blue black hair and tanned skin lay blanketed in a thin layer of silver ash dusting her cheeks, her rouged brown eyes; wide open. Ashley ran over to the girl and knelt down next to her before anyone could stop her and gasped as the helpless child's head tilted to stare straight back, a shimmering drop slipped and her lip started to q-quiver,

"I-I tried to s-stop it, b-but I wasn't strong enough," The girl stammered as she moved a shaking across her bloody body and handed Ashley a sharpe stone covered in black liquid.

Maka rushed to Ashley's side and grasped the stone as Ashley ignored her action and let her scared eyes roll across the girl's split body. Her legs seemed to be detached along with her left arm and a slice through her chest made it obvious a strong weapon was used.

"T-This looks like that black fluid that was inside Ash," Maka shivered as she passed the stone to Soul who quickly put in in a plastic zip lock bag as evidence to hand over to Stein the next time they would meet.

Ashley shifted her hands under the ripped upper body of the child and lay the girl in her lap and stroked her wet hair dripping with sweat.

"I'm g-going to die…aren't I?"

Ashley could no longer see her tears but attempted to mask her distress and sadness through a soft smile as she whispered to her,

"Everything will be ok. If you managed to wound that killer, you must be one of the strongest people in this world..."

"Arukia, my name is Arukia."

"My name is Ashley."

"Ashley, have I helped you? By harming that thing...I helped?"

Ashley nodded sorrowfully but still kept her smile trying to comfort the girl in her arms.

"There was a monster...a monster behind I-it."

Arukia's eye lids slowly closed after several seconds as Ashley's widened and water dwelled before falling down onto the child's own cheeks distorting the flakes of grey. Before she could do anything to save the girl a blue light blinded Ash for a split second before dimming, grasping her attention as the human soul rose from the fresh corpse.

"A human soul...I haven't seen one of those in a while," Liz murmured as Kid had to literally pick up his girl to get her away from the top piece of Arukia's body.

Kid shoulder and ran off with her away from the soul and the body as fast as he could and sat her down on a partially crisped log before wiping the crimson hot fluid off her legs with a cloth,

"I know this is hard, but we can't stop at every dying person we see Ash. The closer we get to Kishiben, the closer we can get revenge on Arukia's death and all the others."

Ashley looked up into his beautiful golden, honey shimmering eyes and nodded as she stood back up and they caught up with the gang.

After several hours searching for clues and evidence in silence they all gathered at the opposite side of the ruined village and stood watching the flames die down. Patty, who seemed to be doing anything but help the group throughout the whole stop, gently placed down a bunch of beautiful white tropical flowers at the exit before joining her sister as everyone took off their hats and showed their respects to the fallen innocent.

As they all turned away Ashley wiped the tears from her eyes and stormed ahead furious with the enemy she suddenly found herself crashing to the ground,

"Ashley?! What are you doing here?!"

She looked up into familiar blue eyes, "I could say the same for you Justin."

"Are you going to tell us now who this student is you're looking for? Or are you just going to brush us off again?" Kid frowned as he approached behind Ashley and rested his hand on her shoulder reassuringly.

Justin gritted his teeth, "All will be revealed soon trust me. Let's just say this particular student is extremely vulnerable, so if I were you I'd get back out there and find that Kishen before it finds them!"

"What's this this about a student?" BlackStar questioned as he and the rest of the gang caught up.

"Justin over here is..."

"Ashley don't you dare!" Justin interrupted but failed to stop her from continuing.

"...looking for a student who is also here in the amazon but has no clue that there is a highly dangerous kishen on the loose."

"WHAT?! WHOS THE STUDENT?!" Liz screamed at the priest angrily.

"What difference does it make Liz? Now all of you, as your superior I am ordering you to go and see Stein and Marie who aren't far from here. Take your evidence to Stein so he can analyse, NOW."