Chapter 35 – Attack on Titan
(Ryosuke: Wait... what? )
"I don't really want to say this, but... my hats off to Golden. Although it's a baseball cap that I'm wearing right now." Arken Varles spoke to his acquaintance. He made a motion of bending down and removing his favorite baseball cap in a gentleman's way before he chucked it away.
"Go away..." Kuvestar said coldly, glaring at Arken.
"I had initially thought that you could have been the perfect weapon to use in order to bring destruction to this world. It seems I was wrong. You are sitting here doing nothing."
"You were using me all this while..."
"Don't say it like that, you hated the world too. Which is why I gave you information that Golden is here. And since you hate everything, why don't you just destroy it now?"
"It's pointless to do so anymore..."
"I had no idea Golden had such a trick up its sleeve. Hmph... So this is Golden's true power. The power to create..."
"Shut up... I'll kill you..."
"Sure, go ahead. You know perfectly well that I can never die. Even if you were to strike me here right now, somewhere in another dimension, Arken Varles still exists, and is waiting to be summoned back into this world."
Kuvestar glared angrily at him.
"This is precisely the reason you do not wish to kill anymore, am I right? I am disappointed... This world isn't destroyed... Why must you best me all the time, Golden? Even after such a perfect plan I had cooked up, it's still not enough... Tch..."
"Leave. Now."
"As difficult as creation is, destruction is easy. But Golden just denied the meaning of that sentence. With Golden's powers, creation is as easy as destruction. Hey, you know what's best about destroying stuff? It's the fact that once it's destroyed, it can either take a long time to restore it, or it may not be restored at all. But now that you have the power to restore it right after it is destroyed, all the fun is taken away. Still, that won't stop me from trying to destroy this world. This world is rotten to the core. So, Kuvestar. Use the powers that are given to you by a god! Destroy this meaningless world, and..."
He paused for a while.
"Let's make a new one."
"Disappear. Now." Kuvestar said coldly. He had had enough of Arken's mindless babbling.
"Right, right, I gotcha... So, think about it, then. It's not like being able to create a new world is an everyday matter though..." Arken said casually and left Kuvestar alone.
.x.
Wilhelmina was already having trouble fighting, and there were many reasons for that. First and foremost, she was injured. Next, the titan not only had thick skin but it could regenerate its wounds at an alarming rate. Wilhelmina had seen enough of overpowered defense in Sabrac, and now this titan seemed to be built in the same mold as her enemy.
The titan was huge and thus it was very slow in both movement and attack. Wilhelmina tried to take advantage of this, but so far she had yet to do so. The titan had no desire to evade her attacks. Whenever she fired missiles at it, all it did was stand there and take the blow. It must have felt no pain, as her attacks barely dealt a scratch to him. Wilhelmina had given her all in the first few attacks, but all she could was to cause some burns, which quickly healed in a few seconds. In fact, the reason that Wilhelmina still had the privilege to stand right now was due to the titan's slow attacks which she was able to evade successfully.
However, her real goal was not to evade the enemy's attacks. She knew tiring her enemy out would not be an option because she herself would run out of energy beforehand. She had set up the Fuzetsu in order to minimize the titan's damage on the humans, but as a result, a portion of her energy, which was not much to begin with, was used on maintaining the spell.
All in all, she would have to do whatever she could at the meantime and wait for reinforcements. She was certain that Michiru, Rebecca and Margery would notice her disappearance and come for her. The only qualm she had that Rebecca and Margery were not in good condition to fight either. If they were to get injured in the battle, it would be her fault as she was incompetent in fighting her enemy. As for Michiru, there was pretty much no need for him to keep his powers a secret anymore, but somehow Wilhelmina did not like the idea of him using the powers too much. She did not know if there were any side effects in using it. Or maybe she just didn't want Michiru involved in any fighting and keep him out of harm's way.
At any rate, she felt that the best scenario would be if she could take care of the titan alone. Despite all that thick skin, she was sure it had a weak spot somewhere, and she must quickly find it in order to turn the tables around. She clenched her fist as she felt the wound in her back sting.
"Wounds tearing. Rest required." Tiamat said curtly.
"I cannot afford to rest now..." Wilhelmina replied in a stubborn manner.
x-x
Michiru could see a Fuzetsu set up somewhere in front of him. His heart skipped a beat. All of his worst fears had occurred: Wilhelmina was endangering herself again.
He wondered why Wilhelmina was so silly as to head back to Misaki (he could assume that, as the direction she was heading was towards Misaki City). Sure, he would never understand the bond between Wilhelmina and Shana, and thus he wouldn't know the reason she was dead set on heading back. However, he believed that Wilhelmina was usually not this stupid enough to pull off such an act. Even as a Flame Haze free of injuries, one would have trouble travelling across the globe, let alone Wilhelmina, who had had a huge share of injuries recently. Wilhelmina must have had something important and urgent to attend to, he could only assume. But even so, it looked messed up to him.
He quickly took out the bookmark which Margery had given him before they dispersed. He subconsciously poured some power of existence into it and it glowed. Soon he heard Margery and Rebecca's voice coming from it.
"What's going on? Have you found her?"
"Yo, wassup? You found her already?"
Michiru cleared his throat and spoke, "Yeah, I see a Fuzetsu in front of me. She must be inside it. Oh, and I'm at..."
"It's okay. I know your location. This bookmark comes with a tracking system." Margery cut across him.
"Good. So..."
There was a small pause.
"I'm heading in, then." Michiru said.
"Be very cautious." Margery warned him.
"I'll be there real quick, so just hang in there for a while." Rebecca said.
"Guys... Have more confidence in me, alright? From the way you're talking you seem to indicate that l'll be slowing Wilhelmina down." Michiru sighed. "Do you guys even know who I am?"
He heard Rebecca chuckle coming from the other end before he hung up.
.-.
Wilhelmina was sizing up her enemy. She had to find out about her enemy's weak spot fast. She tried attacking at all angles to see if the titan had reacted weirdly if she hit close to the weak spot. But so far she had no such luck. Either the titan was indeed invincible without a weakness, or it was smart enough to hide it well. In fact Wilhelmina felt that there was a possibility which the titan itself did not know its own weakness.
The titan tried to punch her, but Wilhelmina saw it coming from a mile away, and she dodged it by jumping onto another building, leaving the old building she was standing on a second ago crushed into pieces. Wilhelmina stared at it. The titan had devastating strength. If she were to receive a hit like that she would most probably break all her bones in her body.
She really had to be careful. This battle made Wilhelmina feel nostalgic. Some time ago in Misaki City, she had fought a Mystes by the name of Kojiro Takasu, who specializes in punches, like this titan. And she had suffered a humiliating defeat in that battle. All because she was careless; she had thought that she had gotten Kojiro for good after she hit him with the missile attacks, but he quickly retaliates when Wilhelmina could not see him through the dark smoke. Her face went red at the thought of that.
Then she realized that while she was thinking about not losing concentration, she had lost concentration. When she snapped out of the daydream the titan's fist was already inches away from her face. Her eyes went wide as she desperately tried to summon some ribbons to block the attack. Yet before she could do that someone had come from her side and grabbed her and carried her in bridal style away from the titan.
Wilhelmina looked at her person. It was none other than Michiru. He was giving her a faint smile.
"Why are you even spacing out in the midst of the battle?" he teased her. Wilhelmina felt hot in the face, and her face went even redder when she felt that Michiru's hand was very close to her bottom the way he held her. She quickly broke free of his grip and landed on the ground. Michiru followed suit beside her.
"Let's just get this out of the way. I have many things that I want to speak to you about, but we can do that afterwards." He said, drawing his sword. He turned his back towards her and faced the titan, but he was still talking to her, "If you're going to protect me, then I'm going to protect you too. I won't let you fight alone. So, do you still have the energy to fight, or do you want to rest?"
Wilhelmina gaped at Michiru's back. She had expected Michiru to say something else. Then, as if he had read her mind, Michiru peered behind his shoulder and spoke, "I would want to command you to stay back and take it easy, but being the stubborn airhead that you are, I'm sure you'll do the exact opposite. So now I'm giving you a choice. Are you going to fight this thing with me, or would you rather stay back and enjoy the show? You've already done more than enough."
Wilhelmina was still stunned by Michiru's sudden change in his manner of speaking. But somehow she liked him better this way. He did look a little cooler with all those words.
"I hear no answer from you. Which means you'd rather stay here then?" Michiru continued, "That's rather surprising, considering that you always felt a strong sense of duty in protecting the humans as a Flame Haze. Then again, I guess it won't make any difference anyway. I'll just strike this thing down with Golden's powers, and we can go home."
He chuckled coolly and took a few small steps towards the titan. He pointed his sword at it, as if declaring for war. Then his calm face vanished instantly. His eyes went wide and he looked panicky.
"Shit... What am I supposed to do?" He thought to himself, feeling panicky, "I may be able to control Golden's powers, but I don't know how to use it to fight!"
Do you know that doing something subconsciously significantly decreases the rate of error? For example, you are now in a bright room, and you type your words on the keyboard without looking at it, and you make very few errors. However, when I turn off one of the lights and make the room darker, you start to be uneasy that you cannot see the keyboard, and you squint at it. As a result, you end up making more typing errors looking at the keyboard than not looking at it.
He was glad that Wilhelmina could not see his face right now. All these while when he summoned Golden's powers, he had done so subconsciously, so he had successfully used its powers fully and destroyed his enemies. But now that he summoned the power himself, and had total control of it, he could not fight instead. Sure, he played some baseball in school, so he could swing a weapon right, but that was far from enough to fight an enemy that a Flame Haze had difficulty fighting.
Thus, all Michiru could do now was to wait for his allies to come and support him. He really did not want Wilhelmina involved in the fight. While delaying as much time as he could by provoking the titan's attacks, he prayed for Rebecca and Margery's quick arrival deep in his heart.
-.-
"Alright, here comes the big one!" Rebecca said happily when she arrived. Relieve swept over Michiru when he saw her. Rebecca had come quickly enough. If she had arrived slightly later he could have embarrassed himself in front of Wilhelmina.
Rebecca released the golden bracelet on her right hand and fired explosion at free will at the enemy, but it did not seem to have much effect either. The titan did groan a little, and felt more pain than the time Wilhelmina had attacked it, but it was still far from the point where it could get beaten.
"Oh my gosh that is some BS right there!" Rebecca said rudely. While the titan was distracted by Rebecca, Michiru attacked the titan's foot. It roared. Wilhelmina concluded that melee attacks deal more damage to it compared to range projectiles. The titan aimed a kick at Michiru but he was quick to dodge it. Rebecca continued her barrage of attacks.
"You must find its weak point fast." Wilhelmina reminded him.
"You were fighting it for quite some time, right? Shouldn't you be able to know it by now?" Michiru said.
Wilhelmina shook her head and replied calmly, "There is a possibility that the weakness can only be exploited by a melee attack. Thus you must try to strike as many spots as you can while Rebecca and I serve as decoys."
"So in the end you still want to get yourself involved. Fine with me as long as you're careful..." He shrugged. "Where do you think I should target next?"
An explosion came from somewhere above them and they heard the titan bellow loudly. Michiru looked up to see Margery standing on her grimoire, looking smug.
"We've been expecting you, Margery-san. You're late." Michiru said.
"Huh. Since when have you started talking like that?"
"Gotta act cool in front of Wilhelmina. You know, in situations like this, the cool one always wins."
"He's all crap." Rebecca piped up suddenly, "He acts cool but can't do anything. This isn't helping us at all."
"Rebecca!" Michiru groaned silently.
"You do realize that everyone's depending on you now, don't you?" Margery told him, "Only melee attacks work against it, and you're the only melee attacker in our party. You have to be the one to step up."
"I know this..." Michiru said. He was feeling frustrated at himself. All this while he had told Wilhelmina he wanted to unleash Golden's powers to protect her. But now that he could actually do so, he couldn't protect Wilhelmina either. He gripped his sword tightly. "Come on, I have to do this..."
Wilhelmina understood his situation. At the beginning, everyone was hoping for him to be able to control his powers in order to fight. In truth, the reason he became unable to fight was because he now had control of his powers. In a basketball game, players sometimes accidentally enter the zone, where the hoop looks ten times wider , your speed becomes twice faster and you seemingly make successful plays without even thinking. Michiru had destroyed his enemies previously because he had subconsciously released Golden's powers. To use basketball as an example, Michiru was never a good player, but he was able to finish off a few dunks because he had entered the zone. Now that he was not in the zone, he could not do anything with the ball in his hands.
If that was the case, Wilhelmina thought, if things were to turn out like this sooner or later, she should have given no thought about Kuvestar and trained Michiru how to use his ability.
Michiru turned back to look at her when Wilhelmina touched him on the shoulder suddenly. She wore a sad expression on her face, and Michiru's heart turned sour immediately.
"Do not be too hard on yourself. I am responsible for this too." Wilhelmina said to him, "I should have trained you how to fight instead of being overprotective of you. I will face my responsibility and fight in your place."
Michiru stayed silent as he looked away from her, keeping his head down. After a moment of silence, he spoke softly, "Wilhelmina..."
Wilhelmina gaped at him.
"You idiot, why do you put the blame on yourself for everything? You know it very well that it's not your fault."
Wilhelmina shook her head and tried to speak, "If I-"
But Michiru pressed his finger on her lips.
"Shut up." He said unemotionally.
The Manipulator of Objects blushed instantly.
"You're always putting others ahead of yourself. That's admirable, but you'll regret it one day if you continue like this. You should value yourself more, Wilhelmina. You are precious to me."
Then he entered the zone. "You know what the most detestable thing in this world is?" He said. Slowly, his sword began to glow in golden. He started to give off an aura of power, as the Treasure Tool inside its body began to reveal itself. Upon sensing it, Wilhelmina slowly let go of him and retreated a few steps.
"ALL RIGHT THIS IS IT! ALL OUT ATTACK!" Rebecca shouted as she began to fire explosions at the titan. Margery and Wilhelmina quickly followed suit. They successfully staggered the titan with the wave of attacks.
They must have flipped a switch in the titan, because it suddenly went on a rampage and hit all the buildings it could reach. Then it spotted Wilhelmina floating in midair, charging for another attack. It roared and sent its fist at her.
Only that someone had stood in front of her before the attack could connect.
"I won't let you lay a finger on Wilhelmina." Michiru said. He sliced off the attacking hand of the titan. All the blood gushed out from the wound as it bellowed in pain.
"This will be painless." Michiru said. For the second time, he attacked. This time, he went for the coup de grace. He aimed at its head. With a swift motion, a line of golden light shone through as the titan was decapitated.
"Wow... That's awesome..." Rebecca said in awe.
"So this is Golden's power. Interesting..." Margery commented.
Rebecca and Margery were beginning to relax once the titan was finally defeated, but it seemed that the tension was not supposed to be over yet. A slap rang in the silent evening while they were not looking.
Apparently, Michiru had mercilessly slapped her across the face. Wilhelmina was holding her cheek and looking surprised while Michiru was clenching his fist, his expression torn between anger, relief, happiness and sadness.
Rebecca made a motion to call out to Michiru, but Margery quickly stopped her by shaking her head. Rebecca gave a deep sigh.
"Why did you have to do this?" Michiru demanded, "I knew you were the stubborn type, but I'd expect you to have the common sense to know what could be done!"
"I am... sorry..." Wilhelmina whimpered, looking at the ground. Michiru continued to stare at her angrily.
"You know very well that you won't be able to change the fact that Shana is dead even when you go back! But even so... you forced yourself to do that. What is the reason for that?"
Wilhelmina stayed silent for a while. Then she spoke slowly, "I have failed... That is why I have to... carry out my final duty for her..."
"It can wait, can't it? You're just being hot-headed..." Michiru said.
Wilhelmina looked apologetic. "There is something to be done. The quicker I finish it, the better it will help the Flame Hazes." She said defiantly.
"Flame Haze... Flame Haze... I'm sick of hearing you say that..." Michiru said coldly. Wilhelmina looked at him wide-eyed in surprise. "You're always thinking about others' sake, when will you start caring about yourself?!"
Wilhelmina merely stood there in shock as Michiru continued to rant. "Stop making me worry about you, dammit... You have no idea how much a care about you, do you? Why don't you start worrying about yourself for a change? What if something were to happen to you because of your stubbornness?! You think I will be able to forgive myself?"
He was getting closer and closer to Wilhelmina as he raged. "I... witnessed Shana's death... It was horrible..." He said while half choking. Wilhelmina bit her lower lip.
"While I was searching for you, I can't help worrying that you might end up in danger, what with Arken attacking us in the open and Kuvestar having Golden's powers. That's why I can't stop feeling scared. You were travelling while injured, so if you faced a strong enemy you might..." Michiru continued, "I can't get rid of the image... the scene where Shana died... I don't want it to happen to you, Wilhelmina! I can lose everything I have, but I can't lose you! I can't let you throw your life away just like that!"
Bit by bit, Wilhelmina started to realize that her stubbornness had caused harm to Michiru and her friends. They had searched everywhere for her, and had to fight in her place when she could not defeat the titan. She bit her lip even harder and clenched her fists.
"You're not alone, Wilhelmina. Come talk to me if you need to get something off your chest." Michiru said with a smile. "You think you should keep your own problems to yourself, Wilhelmina, but that's not right. We're supposed to help each other when we're in trouble, isn't it? Can't you can tell from the fact that we searched everywhere for you? There are people who love you care about you in this world."
This time, it was his turn to put his hand on Wilhelmina's shoulder. "That's why, you're not alone, Wilhelmina. You have friends that will help you. And I will be there for you. So, promise me, don't go doing everything on your own, okay? You really had me worried, you know that? Why is it that you have to head back no matter what?" He said while smiling gently at her.
"I made a promise to train the Enpatsu Shakugan no Uchite and watch over her as she carries out her duty as a Flame Haze. But I have failed that promise... The Enpatsu is..."
Her voice shook and trailed off. Michiru looked at her with a pitying expression on his face. Wilhelmina looked very weak. He had never seen her like that before.
"It's not over yet. Your duty is to take care of the Enpatsu Shakugan no Uchite. I know I sound heartless saying this, but... couldn't we find someone else to form a contract with Alastor?"
Wilhelmina's eyes widened in surprise.
"I understand that the love you give to Shana is more than what a Flame Haze would give her disciple. But what's happened cannot be changed. All we can do is make ourselves a better tomorrow. If we can find someone suitable for that title, then..."
Wilhelmina understood what Michiru was getting at: she had not broken the promise yet.
"I'll help you, of course."
Wilhelmina shook her head.
"It is my responsibility-"
Michiru slapped her again.
"As is mine. Shana died because of me. I have to atone for my sins too."
Wilhelmina held her cheek and shuddered. She felt the tears well up in her eyes and she quickly lowered her head. She wanted to hide her teary face from Michiru more than anything else. But lowering her head and pretending that Michiru wasn't looking certainly did not help. In fact, it had done the exact opposite. The tears had flown out of her eyes, and she was beginning to tremble. Michiru had made her weak.
No, Michiru just made her reveal her real weakness by getting rid of the tough mask she had always worn.
"You're about to cry, aren't you?" Michiru said softly.
Wilhelmina tried to protest, but her voice that came out turned into a wail. She quickly swallowed her sobs. It was too late, Michiru, Margery and Rebecca and seen her bawling in a way unlike her. She felt very shameful at the thought. Yet, no matter how she forced herself to swallow her tears, she could not stop them from flowing out.
"Then cry. I won't look. I promise... I won't look."
Without warning, he pulled Wilhelmina into a tight embrace. He placed her head on his shoulder and began stroking her hair. Wilhelmina's eyes went wide with surprise and she stopped crying for a moment. Then, she slowly closed her eyes and continued crying, this time in his arms. There was no need to act tough anymore. All she needed to do was to savor the moment of being hugged by someone she loved and become oblivious to everything. There was finally someone willing to love her unconditionally, and she took too long to realize that.
Michiru held her even tighter as she trembled, as if he wanted to prevent her from doing so.
-x-