HUGE thank you to everyone who's stuck with my story so far! Thanks for bearing with me as I learned to write (I read some of GRAE V1 and it was baaad), leaving reviews, and helping my story become what it is today!


Mrs. Garnett shrieked with laughter once again. "What, do you have a deathwish?" she taunted. She pointed to Crown Jewel. "This wonderous crown's potential was wasted on you! Even with it, you couldn't hope to stand against me!"

"Shut! Up!" Alexandra yelled. "Crown Jewel is not to be used for murder! Its powers are meant to protect!"

"Then what makes it any different than that blade you point at me?" Mrs. Garnett goaded. "A weapon gains it use when you use it. Therefore, Crown Jewel is meant to kill. It's meant to take in the souls of those below me!"

"Everyone, stay back!" Alexandra ordered.

"No way!" Rusty called. "You can't fight her alone!"

Mrs. Garnett used Alexandra's brief moment of distraction to send a swirling torrent of flame down the village's street. The vicious heat shattered the windows of the surrounding huts, bouncing off the street and toward the group of huntsmen. Rusty ducked behind the village's brick wall just in time to watch a jet of flame shoot through the hole Raven had created, and into the forest. Alexandra ducked behind the nearest hut, and ran in the opposite direction of where she figured the rest of Twilight Crusade to be.

"Running now, are we?" Alexandra heard a voice yell. "Too late!"

A deafening blast rocked the hut nearest Alexandra, knocking her off her feet as the building exploded. She rolled to avoid a splinter the width of her wrist and length of her arm, and kept running. She rounded the corner of a second hut just before another explosion levelled it. She continued on, until she reached the village's main street.

Greyson stood in a large building, which had been relatively untouched. Parchment documents sat on old-fashioned table of a dark wood, never to be read again. Behind the desk, a cushioned black chair and a row of bookshelves. Greyson had one hand on the strange device Ember guessed was a signal of sorts. The machine was ancient, one long handle with speakers on both ends, supported by a base with buttons signalling numbers one through nine. Below the nine, a long button was lit up red.

Greyson's other hand fidgeted. "Are we sure this is our only choice?" he pondered. Half to Azure, half to himself. "We don't even know if Mistral will take us alive. They haven't exactly shown that they would in the past."

"Kita's tongue still needs treatment," Azure reminded. "Plus, that little girl really needs-"

A deafening burst shook Greyson, and caused Azure to stumble before she caught herself on the desk. Greyson looked out the window to see a column of fire and smoke rise into the air on the other end of the village. With a deep breath, Greyson pressed the red button.

Within seconds, someone picked up. "Mistral Military, Northern base," a man's voice answered. "What is the emergency?"

"This is Greyson Skye, leader of the huntsman group Twilight Crusade," Greyson reported. He heard rustling on the other end of the line, before another voice broke through the background.

"Twilight Crusade?!" the second voice, an older man's, called from the background. "Send all ships in the area! Cut off their escape!"

"There will be no need for that," Greyson replied. A second explosion rocked the village. "I'd like to negotiate a surrender. We will surrender peacefully, on four conditions. One, is that you take us in without force. We will not resist. Two, the little girl we've rescued is to be taken in safely, and given whatever therapy and medical help she needs. Three, the woman we're currently locked in combat with is a criminal, and will be treated as such. Four, a full-scale investigation is launched into the Garnett company and its owners."

Greyson heard a sigh from the other end of the line. "...Very well."

Mrs. Garnett raised both hands outward, shaping the air's moisture into two jagged walls of ice. "Nowhere for you to run now, is there?" Mrs. Garnett tormented, voice a sickeningly sarcastic imitation of empathy.

Alexandra's eyes flicked upward for a split second, to where she noticed Kita perched on the roof of a smoldering hut. She held a spherical object in her hand. "That's fine with me," Alexandra calmly replied. "Because I'm done running from you."

The dust wielder shielded her eyes as Kita lobbed the sphere toward Mrs. Garnett, and it exploded with a flash and an ear-splitting crack. Thick grey fog surrounded the battlefield, and Alexandra ran toward her foe.

"Stand back! I've got her!" Pierce shouted through the cloud. He used his semblance in mid air to dodge a spike of ice sent his way, and shot past Mrs. Garnett from the other direction.

Alexandra grinned as Pierce appeared from the fog, clutching Crown Jewel.

"What!?" Mrs. Garnett screamed. A plume of fire sent Alexandra's way dispersed the fog. "DAMN YOOOU!"

Alexandra adjusted the crown on her head, and felt the familiar surge of power course through her veins. She raised one hand to her front, and a wall of stone built up from the street, shaking the ground. Mrs. Garnett's fire shot upward upon contact, until it dispersed high in the air.

The jet of flame stopped, and Mrs. Garnett propelled herself to the top of Alexandra's wall with a rising platform of stone. With a wicked smile, she raised her hand in the air, and closed her fist. Alexandra heard crackling noises as the icy walls next to her produced a barrage of spikes, which closed in on her like an iron maiden. She dodged to avoid one, then ducked backward under a second. As she stood up and hopped forward to dodge a third, she produced a shield of stone from the ground at her feet, and used it to block several more attacks. She then shoved her flat palm toward the ground, and a plume of fire spread in every direction to melt the ice. She tossed the shield into the air, transforming it into a dangerously sharp spear of stone. She caught it, and threw it at her foe.

Mrs. Garnett raised her hand to split the spear down its middle. As the two halves clattered to the street, she jumped down, once again level with her foe. Without so much as a second of pause, Alexandra produced a series of stalagmite icicles, each with their tip aimed for Mrs. Garnett's throat. Her opponent answered with a blast of flame, which melted the ice where it stood. With one arm keeping the pillars of water in place, she raised her other arm to the sky and pulled it downward, summoning a bolt of lightning. The crackling yellow beam arched between the watery spires, then flung itself at Alexandra, who tore up a wall of dirt to avoid the attack. All that injured her were the shards of stone as her wall exploded.

She raised her hands to stop the remaining shards in mid air, and transformed them into a barrage of stony skewers. She shot them forward at her opponent, who formed a disc of ice from the air to block the hail of stone. With a second hand, Alexandra caught her opponent off guard with two skewers of stone from the dirt. They collided with her stomach, and Mrs. Garnett let out a scream of pain.

The scream turned into another laugh. "Who knew?!" Mrs. Garnett exclaimed. "The little girl who hid away with Crown Jewel wouldn't just be another corpse in the end!"

Alexandra watched cautiously without reply until Mrs. Garnett snapped her arm outward, and a stream of white wind shot from her hand. Alexandra responded with a jet of flame. The two attacks met in the middle, glacial cold and blistering heat pushing against each other with the force of two elemental freight trains. Suddenly, Alexandra's fire shot back at her. With less than a second to spare, she switched hands and shot a blast of ice. The two had switched elements, and once again were evenly matched. With her other hand, Alexandra ripped several jagged spires of ice from the wall next to Mrs. Garnett, once again making contact. A cloud of fog escaped Mrs. Garnett's mouth as she sighed in irritation.

"Tempus Diapsalma."

Throughout the village, her foes froze in time. Greyson and Azure still stood at the signal, on the line with Mistral. Rusty and Raven sat outside the village with their backs to the wall, Raven's mouth frozen open with comforting words for the girl they had rescued. Ember was frozen in her stealthy stance, head peeking around a building to watch the battle, Dustyn and Ezelia steps behind. Pierce and Kita both watched from the top of a building, bodies unmoving.

Finally, Alexandra stood still with a smirk on her face, fingers clutching Crown Jewel tightly to her head.

Mrs. Garnett walked up to her, a growl of anger intensifying into a scream of rage. She tried prying the crown from Alexandra's fingers, but to no avail. She stepped backward, and raised both arms. Massive chunks of ice, the size and shape of hundreds of blades, made cracking noises as they pulled from Mrs. Garnett's walls of ice. The icicles hung in the air threateningly, tips pointed at Alexandra's unmoving form.

Time resumed.

Alexandra gasped at the hail of icicles that suddenly bore down on her. Throwing her arms outward, she created a massive explosion of intense flame, which leveled the huts nearest her that still stood. Everything was obscured by mist, and a rain began to fall.

As her aura fizzled around her in a purple hue, depleted by her own attack, Alexandra tore a line of jagged stone up from the street, the spine of spikes threading its way through the mist and toward Mrs. Garnett with impossible speed. The ground at her feet exploded when the spikes arrived, and she was thrust into the air with a scream of pain.

Stone twisted upward like a viscous liquid, and Mrs. Garnett slammed into it, spread eagle. Alexandra's fist clenched, and shackles of stone encased her foe's hands, feet, and stomach, rendering her unable to move.

"Hey! You did it!" Rusty called. He appeared from around the corner of a side street, near the captured woman. He turned his head. "Greyson, we can get her arrested, and get outta here!"

"No," Alexandra grimly responded. "I'm going to kill her."

"Please," Greyson pleaded, as he appeared from behind Mrs. Garnett's shackled form with Azure. "I understand what you feel. But we can't kill her. We're surrendering to Mistral, and they've agreed to take her in."

"You've already beaten her!" Azure chimed in. "Isn't that enough?"

"Don't... Don't try to stop me!" Alexandra insisted. "I've waited my entire life for this moment! To avenge the Inyan tribe!"

"I-It... It won't feel as good as you think it will..." Raven added. "Wh-When I k-killed Mr. Garnett, a-all I felt was-"

"Stop!" Alexandra interrupted. Her voice, saturated with fury, began to carry the weight of tears. "There were times when I nearly starved to death in the desert. Vultures started to pick me apart, and the thought of revenge was the only thing keeping me alive!" She stumbled to her knees, a single tear falling to the frozen ground. "If I don't get revenge, I've lived for nothing, this whole time. My... my entire life has been pointless!"

"Alexandra," Kita began.

"Hey, Kita-" Azure started, concerned for the injuries in Kita's mouth.

"Let her talk," Greyson gently urged. Azure looked to him, then Kita. She sighed.

"Your life has not been pointless," Kita stated. "Think of all those whose lives you saved at the Harvest Festival. Think of the child you saved today. Think of your friends, and how you have made their lives better by being with them." A gentle smile crept across Kita's lips, and she approached Alexandra. She knelt next to her, placing her hand on her heart. "And think of me. The one who loves you."

Alexandra looked up to Kita, teary eyes wide in disbelief. The beginnings of a smile worked their way across her quivering lips.

Before she could get out any words, the roar of an engine drowned out all noise, and a spotlight shone on the scene. Kita pulled Kenakuma from her belt, and put both arms behind her head in a sign of surrender, watching Greyson and Azure do the same. The rest of Twilight Crusade followed suit, the wind from the airship's engines whipping through their hair, and the spotlight casting eerily defined shadows.

Greyson looked up to the ship, face illuminated by the light. He watched as the mass of steel began to land.


Note: I came up with that last scene entire by listening to "I Want to Know" from the Kill la Kill OST, and I can't imagine the scene without it.

Note 2: I'm really sorry, but the conclusion to volume 3 won't be for at least a week. I'm going on a short vacation in a few days, and I doubt I'll be able to finish the chapter by then with packing and all.