A/N *dramatic and ominous piano music plays once again by a dude with crazy hair* Uh oh, shit's about to go down. Although, I'm excited that I finally get to showcase the abilities Kahfka developed on her own after becoming a user of Demon's Extract. This is going to be fun. Leave a fav and review.
Chapter 36 - Despair
"So how was that fight between Fiona and the Lieutenant Colonel?" asked Mine of Leone as the pair made their way through the less crowded streets near the outer edge of New Kannath.
"It was short, but damn was it exciting. Rafe's Trump Card is so powerful I can't believe something like it exists. He was able to make these portals and launch weapons out from them like bullets, and there were so many of them too." explained Leone with a huge grin on her face, the pink-haired sniper listening intently to the entire story.
However, they both stopped suddenly when a certain smell each Night Raid member knew from experience in their line of work. It was the smell of fresh blood, which rang all sorts of bells within the two girls as they sprinted towards the direction it was coming from, the lioness taking point after activating her Teigu so that she could use her heightened senses.
"This way." she said over her shoulder as she bounced around a corner, Mine following behind her at the best of her abilities since she had to carry Pumpkin's carrying case over her shoulder.
"I wish I could move around like that…" thought Mine with a frown out of jealously for Leone's enhanced mobility thanks to the belt she wore around her waist.
They passed by the last row of houses and came to a standstill at what was happening before them just a few meters away.
"Hey, what do you think you're doing?!" demanded Leone with a snarl, the person standing across from them bringing down the blade in their hand and giggling.
"Oh my, it seems I've been found out…"
"Wait a minute...I recognize that voice…" murmured Mine.
The person turned their head and glanced back at them with a grin, Leone and Mine gasping upon realizing that the person staring at them was the girl that had been with Jacqueline when they were fleeing from the Empire. And apparently in the time since then, she had been transformed into almost a perfect copy of the Great General, right down the way she talked and that cocky grin of hers.
"If you're here, then that means that psychopath of a Great General is too, right?" asked Mine after attaching Pumpkin's long barrel part and aiming the weapon at the assassin.
Kahfka giggled again before she forcibly removed her weapon from the back of the person she had murdered and flicked the blood off, her eyes widening a fraction of an inch. "That's a secret...I might tell you if you can catch me though!"
In a flash she took off, both Leone and Mine growling in frustration before the older Night Raid member grabbed Mine, threw her over her shoulders and gave chase after Kahfka on all fours. The smaller girl held on for dear life around Leone's neck with one arm, but when she finally managed to regain control of herself she proceeded to attach the eye scope that came with Pumpkin to her ear, took aim, and fired a bolt of spirit energy at the fleeing Kahfka. To her shock the assassin vanished in a flash of purple and reappeared from thin air a foot away from her previous position, the bolt zooming past her and doing absolutely nothing.
"What the hell?!" she thought before attempting to hit Kahfka again, but just like the first time Kahfka avoided her attack from behind with the same teleportation ability.
"Mine it's pointless to keep trying, she must use a Teigu that enables her to transport herself like that." said Leone when their prey ducked to the right into a tall patch of grass.
When she saw them follow her into the depths of the long flowing plains Kahfka's grin morphed into a demonic smile brimming with malicious intent, her grip around Cypher tightening when her plan started to come together.
"Yeah, that's it...just keep following me to your graves." she thought evilly before making another sharp turn towards a clearing she had marked earlier.
A couple of meters later she ran out of the tall grass and came to a halt at the opposite side when Leone and Mine emerged behind her, the smaller assassin dismounting from Leone and pointing Pumpkin at her again with a scowl on her face.
"There's nowhere for you to run and hide out here, my sense of smell in this form is impeccable." boasted Leone with a smirk while cracking her knuckles, her beastial instinsts beginning to kick in.
Kahfka giggled again as she fully turned her body around in order to place a hand on her hip and glare at the duo, Leone and Mine hiding their surprise when they noticed the difference in her eyes and that one was no longer the green color she had.
"What happened to you?" asked Mine to get a little information out of the girl, Kahfka raising an eyebrow and flipping back a lock of her hair.
"Oh nothing really, just got some body enhancements here and there, just like my friend. To be honest I was waiting for him to return to the Imperial Capital so that I could continue training, but…" Instantaneously Kahfka's entire demeanor soured with the changing of her expression to one so filled with hate and rage it sent chills running up and down Mine's back. "You killed him. He was more to me and Jacqueline outside of being a bodyguard...I'm going to slaughter you for making her cry."
Mine and Leone braced themselves with an intoxicating amount of bloodlust and power blew past them as an invisible force so strong it caused their hair to whip behind them wildly, their eyes widening in horror when it dawned on them that this feeling was similar….extremely similar.
"This aura...it's so dark and vile. It's just like…no, that's not possible!" thought Leone with terror in her expression when two pairs of horns made of pinkish-red ice emerged from Kahfka's head and glinted in a sunlight, the assassin giggling while she unbuttoned her trench coat.
Kahfka's right eye morphed from its usual green color to a blood red, the pupil shrinking into a slit, and its white sclerae morphed into a dark grey as she entered an unusual transformation. She finished with the last button of her trench coat and slipped it off, revealing her voluptuous body for them to see as well as the red markings that had appeared on her body in certain areas as well as her cheeks, giving her the overall appearance of a demon.
Leone only had to take one look at the skin just above her cleavage to have her worst fears realized. Resting comfortably at the base of her neck was the tattoo marking a user of Demon's Extract, the very same Teigu Esdeath used and was supposed to be the only user.
"Y-You can use Demon's Extract? That's impossible! Esdeath's the only user of that Teigu!" stammered Mine in defiance, but Kahfka only grinned at her whilst manifesting a shard of ice in the air above her left hand in order to twirl it around her index finger.
"Not any more. Remember when she had her arm cut off? We took the arm and removed the blood out of it, and long story made short...I am now a full-fledged wielder of Demon's Extract." she stated in a sing-song tone before she snapped her fingers and created several thousand razor-sharp copies of the original shard of ice in the air behind her. "And unlike Esdeath's flashy and devastating area-of-effect techniques...mine are geared more towards assassination."
She threw her arm forward and sent the cloud of small icicles flying towards Leone and Mine, but thanks to Pumpkin's exceptional ability, Mine quickly brought up the rifle and blasted them all away with a giant beam of spirit energy.
"Keep her occupied Leone! You know the plan!" said Mine with a cocky smirk, Leone glancing back at her for a second and nodding.
She crouched down on all fours and bounded at Kahfka, swiping at her head with her claws while at the same time using her feet to try and knock off balance with kicks and jabs at her legs. Kahfka giggled the entire time like a little school girl as she blocked and parried her strikes with ease just by creating small barriers of ice, and when she found an opening she reared back and landed a punch in Leone's stomach that knocked the wind out of her and broke several of her ribs.
"Is this really all you can offer?"
The Lioness chuckled under her breath when, to Kahfka's surprise, she wrapped her hands around her arm tightly and held on with monstrous strength, the assassin glaring at her opposite with beastial eyes.
"Try me. Mine!"
"On it!" exclaimed the pink sniper as she pulled down the trigger and fired a spirit energy bolt right at Kahfka's temple.
A wall of ice materialized from the ground next to her in order to stop the attack dead in its tracks while she ripped her hand out of Leone's strangle-hold and leaped back a few meters. "Weissschlund!" she bellowed, an incredibly dense boulder of ice forming in the air in front of her, before she kicked it with both feet at the lioness.
The ball split apart down the middle and opened itself up to create a gaping maw filled with razor sharp icicles, and it took a split second reaction for her to dive to the side in order to avoid being caught within the deathtrap. The boulder struck the ground behind her after losing some altitude and shattered into tiny little bits and pieces, Kahfka frowning at the failed technique for a moment until she revised her strategy and dropped Cypher.
"Kalt Grausamkeit!"
She threw her arm forward and generated an incredibly sharp spear of ice that lanced out at Mine, growing so incredibly fast in such a short amount of time that Leone barely got there in time to bash the weapon away with a punch and save her comrade.
"They're watching each other's backs...I need to separate them." thought Kahfka as she removed her arm from the broken ice spear and flexed her fingers, several crystals of ice forming in the air behind her shoulders to wait for the time of their use.
"Thanks Leone."
"No problem, can't have our Genius Sniper go down can I?" asked Leone with a wink.
They returned their attention to their opponent and got another chill up their spines when she started to laugh, the pair tensing up in preparation for whatever she had planned next. Kahfka brought her head up and gave them all a twisted smile seen only on the craziest of psychopaths, one befitting of someone who is a subordinate of the Great General.
"You two really think you can beat me? That is rich! All this time you thought you were keeping up with me and matching my skills...but, that's not the case." giggled Kahfka before she inhaled a deep breath and leaned forward. "Arktis Schneesturm."
She unleashed a massive cloud of sub-arctic air laced with tiny ice crystals that washed out over the clearing and completely encompassed Leone and Mine, the ice hidden within making tiny little tears in Mine's clothes and Leone's bare skin. She brought her arms up to shield her face alongside Mine and they attempted to see and or sense their opponent, but while Mine was at a loss for what to do, her animal-like partner could still perfectly smell Kahfka in the cloud and make out her position easily.
"Nice try. You can hide yourself, but you can't hide your scent from me!"
"Mine, she's directly in front of us!" she yelled out above the raging whirlwind, the pink-haired sniper nodding her head as she brought up Pumpkin and aimed straight ahead.
"Leone, duck!"
She did just that and Mine unleashed her Teigu's Trump Card, the blade-like blast of spirit energy sweeping through the cloud and vaporizing the grass in its path. A few seconds after Mine used her Trump Card the arctic cloud vanished, revealing Kahfka standing completely unharmed a few yards away from them.
"She must've ducked underneath the attack." thought Mine as a gentle hiss echoed out from Pumpkin, telling her the weapon was currently cooling down after the sudden output of spiritual energy.
"I think I'm going to play around with them a little longer...this is starting to become amusing." thought Kahfka with a slight grin as she created two blades of ice and twirled them around in her hands, her eyes set on Leone.
Without a word she darted towards her and reinstigated the close-quarters fight from earlier, the two combatants trading heavy blows with one another in an attempt to outmatch each other. Kahfka lunged at Leone's side with an ice sword and cut into her skin, going deep enough to draw blood and force Leone to retreat for a moment to rethink her plan of attack.
"Do you feel scared yet?" asked Kahfka with a sneer, Leone growling angrily at her.
"Why don't you just shut up!?" yelled Mine as she fired another massive blast of spiritual energy from her Teigu.
Kahfka brought her hand up and manifested another large wall of ice, but to her shock the barrier failed almost instantaneously and she was knocked back several meters into the scar produced by Pumpkin's Trump Card from earlier. She rolled to a stop and grunted, a tingling sensation close to what it felt like to be electrocuted washing over every single one of her limbs and paralyzing her for a few seconds.
"Leone now!"
Leone cleared the distance in between her and Kahfka and reared back for a brutal punch that threw Kahfka back to the ground, a secondary kick to the gut sending her rolling away for another few yards. She was about to press her advantage before Kahfka brought an arm up and clenched her fist, Leone's eyes shooting wide open and a gasp escaping from her lips when multiple icicles emerged from the dirt around her and impaled her through the gut.
She dropped to her knees and then onto her stomach, Kahfka giggling as she got back onto her feet and strode over to Leone with several more icicles floating in a circle around her left hand.
"This is where weak vermin like you belong...on the ground underneath the boots of the strong." she said viciously when she brought down her hand and imbedded the icicles through every joint in Leone's arms and legs, pinning her to the ground and taking her out of the fight.
She was about to finish off the lioness before she was warded off by another quick shot from Pumpkin, Mine taking a couple of steps forward and scowling at her.
"Mine, don't...you need to get out of here!" murmured Leone through the blood dripping from her lips, her friend looking down at her and smiling.
"I ran away once before...and because of that, Sheele died. I'm not running away again." she replied before she returned her gaze to Kahfka and frowned. "I am a Genius Sniper, after all."
Kahfka smirked at her boast and twirled one of her swords around while Mine removed the scope from her eye and tossed it to the side, a quick glance at Pumpkin and the condition it was in telling her that she could use its Trump Card a few more times.
"You really think you can kill me with that Teigu of yours?" asked Kahfka, Mine glaring at her in silent fury.
"I don't think, I know."
She whipped Pumpkin back up and fired at Kahfka to get her on her toes, the assassin rolling to the side and bounding off her right foot like a sprinter towards her. Mine's lip curled up slightly when the pieces of her plan fell into place, and when she felt that Kahfka had gotten close enough, the danger to her life now through the roof, she cocked Pumpkin to the side and pressed down on the trigger hard.
Kahfka had to duck at the last second to avoid the sword-like beam Mine threw at her, but what she wasn't expecting was for Mine to immediately fire off the Trump Card at a different angle then the previous one.
It was far too late and she was already sprinting at full speed...and with no other options left the beam struck her in the gut and cleaved her in two, her arms flying off in different directions while her upper body hit the ground a few seconds before her waist and legs.
"That's what you get." thought Mine victoriously before lowering the steaming Pumpkin and letting out a sigh of relief.
"Alright Leone, I'm coming to help you out."
She turned her back on Kahfka and set down Pumpkin in the grass in order to use both hands to pull out the shards of ice from her friend's limbs. She only realized afterwards that this was a horrible, horrible decision.
All of a sudden Mine stumbled forward a couple of steps while blood exploded out from her left shoulder, her eyes gravitating to the razor sharp icicle stabbed through her clothes and skin.
Leone could only watch in terror as Mine whimpered at the unnatural and paralyzing agony that coursed through her veins when a sinister laugh emerged from the grass to their left. Beyond all belief, out from within emerged Kahfka, completely without a scratch whatsoever and with a devilish smile plastered on her face.
"H-How did you survive?! You should be dead!" sputtered Leone.
"You may have a good sense of smell, but that won't help you discern the real person from a fraud." replied Kahfka before she snapped her fingers, the corpse they thought was her disintegrating into several tiny ice particles that blew away in the wind.
"Now then...let's have some fun."
She was right on top of Mine in the blink of an eye, and with a harsh punch to her jaw she sent the smaller girl tumbling across the ground to the left for several meters. She grunted and spit up blood when she finally stopped rolling and looked up at Leone, her truly terrified expression burning itself into her brain.
"Mine, just run. You can't beat her! Find Tatsumi, find Esdeath, anyone! Just run!" pleaded Leone desperately to try and keep her friend alive, but against her wishes Mine slowly got back into her feet and wiped the blood from her lips.
"I'm not running...and even if I did she would still hunt me down." she said with a shaky tone, Kahfka's deranged giggle resurfacing once again in response.
"She's not wrong...but let's see if you can actually save your friend."
She crossed her arms and watched Mine clench her jaw muscles and growl under her breath, every single ounce of her anger getting directed towards her through just her gaze alone. She started to walk towards the pinned Leone, and the lioness could only watch with a pained heart as Kahfka, whenever she would get close, would kick back Mine with devastating force and then send another icicle shard through her body, the first going through the left side of her torso, and then the third ramming itself through her right thigh.
Her clothes were tattered and blood stained, and the pain from her wounds was making it hard to see and walk, so much so that she collapsed onto her knees after the fourth attempt.
"Fuck you...you fucking bastard!" snarled Leone angrily while Kahfka continued to smile at how much pain she was putting Mine through.
"Why don't you try again, little girl?" asked Kahfka eagerly, Mine coughing up more blood again as she slowly got back onto her feet.
"I can't...run away, not after what happened to Sheele…" she thought, determined to keep pushing forward.
Kahfka watched with interest as Mine hobbled towards Leone with what little strength she had left, and when she fell back down, this time onto her stomach, she still continued to crawl towards her friend with traces of tears forming in the corner of her eyes. When her body could no longer respond to her brain's commands she slowly reached out with her one working arm towards Leone, their eyes glued on one another.
"Mine...please…" asked Leone in almost a whisper, the sorry sight occurring before her too much too handle.
"I-I'm...sorry…" murmured Mine before smiling one last time, a single tear rolling down her cheek and striking the grass between them.
Meanwhile Kahfka, standing just a few feet away from the pair, brought up one of her hands and lost all sense of humanity in her expression as she tightened her fingers into a fist and brought an end to their moment swiftly. "Ausführung."
Quicker then lightning, a larger ice spear formed from the earth directly underneath Mine, impaling her through the gut and taking her up a couple of feet off the ground before, to Leone's horror, two large semi-spheres of ice formed on either side of her and slammed together like the mouth of a beast clamping shut tightly around it prey. Mine's body vanished in a fountain of blood that shot out from the tiniest of gaps in between the two ice blocks, the force produced by their connection so powerful it instantly crushed every single bone in her body and liquified it...leaving behind no trace of her existence except for the huge red stains that covered the ice and the large puddle that started to accumulate on the ground.
Leone was utterly silent, her eyes as wide as the moon, and plastered on her face was an expression so horror-filled, so gut-wrenching, one would think she had just watched the death of a sister or brother. In a sense, Mine was a family member to her. They had been comrades-in-arms as members of Night Raid and close friends, and after watching her get brutally executed before her very eyes as she laid there unable to do anything to stop it...something inside her broke into a million pieces.
"Hmm...oops. I didn't want to kill her that quickly…" remarked Kahfka sarcastically with a light-hearted giggle as she peeked around the bloodbath and caught a glance at Leone. "Oh don't give me that look. You're gonna make me feel all giddy inside."
She casually strolled over to Leone and crouched down beside her, gently placing a hand on top of her head and looking at the spot where Mine had once been just a few seconds before, the lioness doing nothing to stop her.
"You feel that lump in your throat? That bottomless pit developing in the bottom of your heart? It's despair. Just take a moment to think about what will happen next." said Kahfka, the tears in Leone's eyes starting to roll down her cheeks. "Your body locks up, you lose all sense of hope in your mind and soul. And you and I both know that despair is a lot like gravity. All it takes is a little...push."
As soon as she finished her sentence Leone completely broke down into an onslaught of tears, crying out and trying with all her might to break free of the icy restraints pinning her to the ground. Kahfka knew that at this point there was no chance of Leone attacking her, so she granted her wish and dissolved the icicles stabbed through Leone's limbs so that she could painfully drag herself over to the ice and pull herself up its surface to place a hand on it. It was the only way for her to believe that she was somehow still there with her, even though there was no corpse left behind.
Kahfka felt several presences heading their way, so she quickly grabbed her trench coat and Shingu before teleporting away into the forest of plain grass to escape. A short while after she left Tatsumi, Esdeath and Run crested the small hill behind Leone and saw her first thing above anything else.
"Leone!? What happened!" asked Tatsumi as they ran up to her, Esdeath's eyes gravitating to the blood-stained hemisphere of ice.
Tatsumi struggled to pry Leone away from the horrific structure, and he couldn't even get a proper answer out of her through the tears and cries of sorrow coming from the usually optimistic and bodacious lioness. It was totally uncharacteristic of her, and his mind was going at one hundred miles per hour to try and figure out the reason behind this shocking change in his friend.
Run scanned the scarred clearing and when he spotted something resting on the ground a few feet away, he walked over to it and felt an extreme sense of sorrow wash over his body at seeing what it was.
"Guys…" he said over his shoulder, Tatsumi and Esdeath turning their heads towards him as he picked an object up and showed it to them.
A rope wrapped itself around Tatsumi's heart and squeezed as tight as it could when he saw Pumpkin resting in Run's arms, his eyes returning to the bloodied ice and, like a boulder, the realization hit him.
"Oh god…" muttered Esdeath when the truth dawned on her as well, the three Jaegers all staring at what they now knew to be the final resting spot of Mine.
There was going to be no need for a burial...there was nothing left behind to bury. Mine was gone, in every sense of the word.
"Leone...who did this? Where did this ice come from?" asked Run to try and think of a rational way through this dire situation, the blonde looking up at him and sniffing heavily.
"I-It was one of J-Jacqueline's subordinates...s-she…"
"She what?" questioned Esdeath.
"She could use Demon's Extract…" stuttered Leone, a fresh batch of tears emerging from the corners of her eyes. "She killed her...she killed her…"
If they weren't already shocked beyond belief, learning that Esdeath wasn't the only user of Demon's Extract and that this new user was one of their enemies completely blew everything out of the water. Tatsumi glanced back at his wife and they both had the same thought...the only way there could been another Demon's Extract user would have to have been from when she had gotten one of her arms cut off and that her blood must've been drawn out from it.
After taking a few moments to make a silent farewell out of respect for their friend, they took Leone back to the capital to have her wounds treated and to break the news to Najenda and the other Night Raid members. Lubbock didn't believe them at first, but when he and Akame saw just how badly wounded Leone was before Run took her to the hospital...they realized it was all genuine. The sharp-tongued, pink-haired assassin they had all come to love, and hate sometimes, was never going to come back.
With nothing else left to say or do until Leone got back and they received word back from Solomon and Camilla from the east...they retired to the place given them to act as their home in New Kannath to sit in utter silence and try to move on from the death of their friend.
A/N For those who need translations
Weissschlund - White Maw
Arktis Schneesturm - Arctic Snowstorm
Ausführung - Execution