A/N I'm figuring out more and more of the plot for this second part that takes place between the beginning and ending with each passing day, and I'm hoping that it will be able to appease you guys. Personally I think it's going to be cool, but the final verdict is left up to you guys, so I can only hope, wait and see. And I apologize, I haven't added Morgan to the the wiki yet, so I'll be sure to add him soon. Leave a fav and review.
Chapter 51 - Midnight Terror
- 12:05 A.M -
Lucena had waited for a good while to be sure everyone within the mansion had retired for the night before quietly sneaking over to her bedroom window and opening it up to the cold night air outside. She climbed out through the square hole and stood on the roof tiles just underneath the ledge for a few moments, her eyes and ears open for any sign of people that could discover her, but when nothing came back she took off for the Imperial Palace by leaping from rooftop to rooftop.
She didn't dare use Demon's Extract since her mother would easily be able to sense it, so she used another less conventional way that would still enable her to get to the palace without any trouble. Once she was close enough she dropped down onto the street and walked the rest of the way, passing by the Imperial Guards on the night shift before making her way to the palace gardens.
And just like her hunch had told her, she saw the less-then-human Emperor taking a casual stroll through the flower beds since he hardly required sleep. When her footsteps were registered by Arthur he turned and held his arms behind his back while he raised an eyebrow out of intrigue.
"Lucena? What are you doing here at this time of night?"
- House of Akame and Wave -
Hikari rolled over onto her side for probably the tenth time in a matter of five minutes and groaned under her breath, the sweat beads sliding down her forehead beginning to accumulate in her pillow sheet and form a slight stain. Her heart was running faster then it should be when asleep, and every position she tried only brought discomfort.
Within her mind she kept hearing these strange and unknown whispers that threatened to drive her insane, or worse, deprive her of sleep like it had been for the last four hours. It was a strange type of dream, not really a nightmare, but she couldn't do anything to try and silence the voices in her head.
Then, all of a sudden, the whispers totally vanished without a trace and she was blessed with a moment of silence before her entire body just froze up and a voice brimming with evil came into existence from the shadows of her thoughts.
"Come to me. Come!"
She jolted awake and almost instantly a black hand covered in what she could only guess was armor snapped tightly around her throat, terror and horror starting to overwhelm her senses as she looked at what the hand belonged to. A dark figure cloaked entirely in shadows that hid its identity from her, the only defining characteristic she could get being that it was wearing some sort of armor that possessed no openings whatsoever, save for the thinly carved slit that displayed the ghastly glow of two orange eyes.
"You are mine." was all the figure said before the shadows cloaking its body began to seep out of his hand and go into Hikari.
She struggled and tried to break free from the grip of this unknown figure, but with every effort she made her body grew weaker and weaker. She stared into the eyes of the armored figure and she felt her consciousness begin to fade away, and something else far more sinister begin to assert its dominance over her and take control.
"No...I...stop it!" she said in defiance, but the armored figure payed no attention to her pleas and reached out with its second hand, index finger extended out, towards her forehead.
"Come to me...we have work to do."
The figure touched the tip of his finger to Hikari's forehead and almost instantly she lost all feeling in her arms and legs, her body become a rag doll that freely allowed the being to finish what it had started.
All of sudden the nightmare ended and Hikari's eyes shot wide open as she awoke, but...something was wrong. Her normally blue eyes had lost their color and had instead gained a crimson red hue that seemed to glow in the darkness of her bedroom. She silently climbed out from underneath the covers and walked over to the nearby closet in order to start getting dressed, the stoic expression on her face hardly changing.
The sweat beads on her forehead had also vanished entirely, and every part of her posture and demeanor gave off a an eery sense of calm. Even her breathing was controlled to the point it sounded almost unnatural. After slipping on her second shoe she turned around and stared out through her bedside window, her gaze locking onto the Imperial Palace in the distance.
"Go."
- Imperial Palace Gardens -
"Sorry Arthur, but I have something on my mind that's really bothering me, and I thought that you would be able to help." stated Lucena while rubbing her arm out of regret, the Emperor chuckling and walking over to her.
Arthur nod his head out of understanding and urged her on to speak, "Of course, I'd be happy to help. Tell me, what's bothering you?"
"Well...it's something that has to do with Hikari." said Lucena in a low tone.
"What of her?"
"The day before, after we left her when you, Selena, and the other started talking, Hikari and I went to the Imperial Training Grounds to have a little mock sword fight, and right in the middle of it she just suddenly lost all feeling in her body and very nearly collapsed." Lucena explained with a concerned expression, Arthur beginning to develope one of his own just from the tone of voice she was using.
"Could it have been from exhaustion?" he asked to try and discover a rational solution.
Lucena shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest, her gaze dropping from Arthur's when the memories of the terrifying experience came back to haunt her. "No, she described it as something along the lines of an adrenaline rush. She felt an extreme sense of excitement within her before all of a sudden she just shut down, like a switch had been flipped."
Now it was Arthur's turn to start thinking to determine the answer to their predicament, and the first idea that popped into his head wasn't very reassuring, far from it actually.
"No...it couldn't be...that's preposterous…"
"What scared me the most though was that she said in the split second between blacking out and me catching her...she felt an overwhelming feeling of anger." finished Lucena with a worried look at the Emperor, who turned himself away from her slightly and rubbed the end of his chin with his hand, tapping it a few times while deep in thought.
"Arthur?"
He jumped a little like she had snuck up on him, but he quickly recovered his posture and returned his hand to rest with the other behind his back. "I apologize, I delved too deep into my own thoughts."
"What were you thinking of? Do you know why that happened to Hikari?"
"Possibly...but I don't like it, and neither will you." he replied with a grim look coming from his eyes and furrowed brow, which only served to make Lucena feel even more worried for Hikari.
"Yesterday, after I finished my discussion with your sister, Raphael and his son, I performed my usual check on the Teigu Devil's Heart within the vault. For some reason, it suddenly got excited and beat at a faster rate then ever before, as if it could feel that its potential user was close by. I myself felt somewhat perplexed and infatuated with the heart, but I was able to restrain myself easily enough and leave. But if what you're saying about Hikari is true, and that these events are actually linked…"
They both froze up when an immense amount of killer intent washed over and through their bodies from somewhere behind the palace grounds, and both of them knew exactly where it came from without a doubt. They quickly left the palace gardens and ran as fast as they could to the Imperial Teigu vault, arriving to a scene taken straight out of a nightmare that sent chills running up and down their spines.
"Oh no…" murmured Arthur as they walked by the crumpled and bloody corpse of guards who had been killed through the use of a blade.
Lucena approached one body slumped up against the wall next to the entrance for the staircase and she immediately recognized the black marks stretching across the man's skin from top to bottom. A sense of horror gripped her heart as she turned to face Arthur and gulped nervously, the Emperor himself seeing them and shivering again.
"They were killed by Murasame...wait, Lucena!" shouted Arthur when Lucena suddenly flung open the stairwell door and vanished into the darkness after her friend. "Damn, I need to find help fast!"
"Hikari!" she called out when she travelled a good length of the way down, her eyes quickly adjusting to the darkness and her sense of space and range giving her the ability too descend the stairs relatively quickly.
When no response came back to her she ran even faster down the stairs until finally she arrived at the vault door itself, and without a second thought she stepped through the passageway past the door and entered the circular room beyond. She kept Tyrannus close at hand in case she needed to activate the armor, but she wanted to try and talk with Hikari first to figure out what was wrong and why this was all happening.
"Hikari?" she asked as she slowly approached the secondary vault door, which was hanging slightly ajar from its hinges.
She gripped the door and slowly pulled it open to give her ample room to step inside, the pitch black darkness of the holding chamber receding little by little as the faint light from the main vault poured inside.
Hikari was standing on the opposite side of the room directly in front of the cage that contained Devil's Heart, and in her hand Lucena could see Murasame, it's blade soaked with the blood of its most recent victims. She was standing perfectly still, and hardly reacted to her entrance despite how close they were to one another.
"H-Hikari? Are you okay?" asked Lucena with a stutter.
Hikari didn't respond, so Lucena inched forward another step to get a better look at what her body was hiding from view. Suddenly Hikari dropped Murasame to the ground, the blade clanging against the stone floor and producing a ear-splitting racket that made Lucena cringe and pause in her cautious approach.
Then with a single hand Hikari reached up to the base of her neck and pulled off her father's scarf, followed by using both to unbutton her uniform and shrug it off somewhat where it hung loosely around the crooks of her arms.
"He called to me…"
Lucena was almost surprised by the sound of Hikari's since she had been entirely focused on watching what she was doing. "W-What? Who called to you?"
Unfortunately Hikari did not respond to her question and proceeded to unbutton the white dress shirt she wore underneath her uniform down to just underneath her chest, opening it up just enough to show off the top portion of her chest and decent amount of her cleavage.
"Now he's going to come back...and there's nothing you can do to stop it…" muttered Hikari again before gasping harshly, Lucena now fearing for her more so then ever before.
Her body was paralyzed in fear when Hikari took a step to the right and slowly turned to face her, revealing the empty holding cage for Devil's Heart first, and then when she fully faced her she covered her mouth in shock at the sight of the skin at the base of her neck closing itself up to hide the heart.
Once it fully assimilated itself with her, Hikari buttoned up the dress shirt again as well as her uniform, hiding the fact she that had just took Devil's Heart. Then she opened up her left hand and stared intensely at Lucena with a cold, hard gaze devoid of any expression, the Great General taking a step back when a razor-sharp bone protrusion emerged from the palm of her hand.
"Hikari, I don't know what's gotten into you, but I'm not letting you leave!" exclaimed Lucena, Hikari cocking her to the right in response like she didn't understand.
"It's already too late."
Suddenly the entire room began to shake and rumble like an earthquake had just spawned beneath the Imperial Capital, then without warning the entire ceiling burst apart into a shower of dirt and stone that forced Lucena to protect herself with an ice shield, Hikari merely grinning at her when two spiraling tusks forced their way into the vault from above.
"Farewell."
"Hikari!" shouted Lucena when she grabbed onto one of the tusks and was lifted out of the room, Lucena running to the spot directly underneath the hole and gasping when she saw the mole-like Danger Beast Leonard had described staring right back at her.
The creature screeched at her before burrowing through the earth across from it and vanished from sight, Arthur appearing soon after from the vault itself and staring up with her.
"What just happened?! Where's Hikari?!"
"One of those unknown Danger Beasts just left with her, and she took Devil's Heart with her!" said Lucena back as she leaped up after the Danger Beast, motioning with an extended hand and finger to the surface. "Find anyone that you can!"
With that she gave chase after the mole-like Danger Beast and Hikari, her rapier glowing as she swept it to the side and donned Tyrannus the unconventional way while on the run,
Hikari glanced back over he shoulder from her position atop the Danger Beast's back and narrowed her eyes upon seeing their pursuer, her attention returning to the creature when she placed a hand on its leathery skin. "Karkatus, rise."
The Danger Beast screeched in response and turning on a dime straight upward it began to make its way towards the surface, Lucena having to stop and manifested her ice wings in order to keep the chase going. When the beast finally emerged from the earth just outside the wall protecting the Imperial Capital, it quickly scurried away as a larger form took its spot to wait for Lucena.
When she soared out of the hole she just had barely enough time to create an ice barrier to take the brunt of the blow made by a large curled up fist that came from out of nowhere. She recovered herself mid-flight and gasped when she saw the new Danger Beast unlike the three already seen thus far yet at the same time very similar to them standing before her. It was a large, fox-like creature that remarkably had nine flowing tails and silver fur, the tips of its tails a blazing scarlet color, as well as a several small horns emerging from it forehead.
It roared at her and she had to fly away again when the Danger Beast spread its maw wide open and created a sphere of fire that was launched at her at break-neck speed.
"Grauhorn!" bellowed Lucena as she created several large shards of ice in the air, five razor-sharp pillars of ice shooting out from them and going right for the Danger Beast.
It brought one of its tails around and encased it in flames a fraction of a second before smashing aside the ice, negating the attack almost immediately. Lucena growled before she barreled right for the being and reared her arm back, the fist then flying forward and striking the Danger Beast in the direct center of its forehead. It reeled back from the devastation blow, Lucena following it up by flying to the ground underneath it and slamming her hands to the ground to enact her next technique.
She sent a huge column of ice rocketing up into the Danger Beast's gut that carried it off the ground and into the air. She then followed up by summoning a huge chunk of ice that she used to crush the Danger Beast from above and keep it pinned beneath the two hunks of ice, but just when she thought she had won the fox-like creature roared and literally ignited its entire body on fire to melt its way out of the ice.
When it was free the fire vanished and the Danger Beast brought around all nine of its tails, Lucena bracing herself with a layer of ice before she was knocked away by them and sent flying back towards the Imperial Capital.
She grunted when she struck something mid air and opened her eyes, gasping to see that she was caught by Wave, who had donned Grand Chariot's armor and was flying with her thanks to the two wings sprouting out of his back.
"You okay?" he asked as he let go of her, Lucena nodding.
"Yeah, thanks for that. I'm guessing Arthur already told you what's happened?"
"Mhmm. He came to Akame and I first and I left as soon as he finished, so I can only assume he's either on his way to tell Esdeath, Tatsumi and your sisters or he already has done so and they're going to be here soon."
Lucena smirked and manifested the frozen Neuntote in her right hand while Wave narrowed his eyes and clenched his fists, his beastial urges and instincts beginning to come up from within as he stared at the Danger Beasts.
"Xelles, retreat." spoke a voice into the fox creature's head, the Danger Beast snarling and glaring at its enemies for a few moments before it turned tail and full-on sprinted away so suddenly and at such speed Lucena and Wave had no time to react and give chase.
"Dammit, just like before…" growled Lucena in frustration as she deactivated Tyrannus, Wave returning to normal as well when they landed atop the capital defensive wall.
There was no sign of Hikari or the second Danger Beast she had escaped with, and now that the fox-like Danger Beast had just left, they had literally nothing to go off of except for what they had left behind.
"Lucena! Wave!"
They turned and saw Arthur, followed by Lucena's parents, Maya, Juno, and Akame, leap up onto the wall from within the city and run over to them, each with a differing but all the same look of worry painted on their face.
"Where did Hikari go?" asked Akame when she went straight to Wave, the man sighing heavily and wrapping his arms around her.
"She's gone...I don't know where she went."
Akame bit her lip and buried her face into his shoulder, Wave gently caressing her hair with his hand and sympathizing with her about the disappearance of their daughter.
"Lucena, I know I asked you earlier, but what exactly happened down there in that vault with Hikari? Why was she taken by those Danger Beasts?" questioned Arthur, Lucena sliding Tyrannus' key into it sheath and sighing heavily.
"She wasn't taken...she willingly went with them."
A blanket of dead silence draped itself over the gathering when she revealed one of many horrible truths about what had just occurred. Wave and Akame stared at her with wide eyes and open mouths, Tatsumi, Esdeath and Maya only looked at her in disbelief, and Arthur remains silent with his eyes closed.
She told them word for word, detail for detail of her encounter with the changed Hikari down in the vault built to contain Devil's Heart, and when she got to the part about her taking the Teigu and allowing it to merge itself with her body, everyone was left with a sense of dread that paralyzed them in terror. They all started to think that she was going to end up becoming another cruel sadist like Jacqueline, but Lucena changed that thought quickly when she mentioned that she showed no change in demeanor upon taking the heart, and that she spoke of someone coming back.
"Who is going to come back? Did she tell you?" asked Tatsumi in the hopes that they would at least get one piece of solid information, but Lucena shook her head regretfully.
"No...she didn't. But I could tell that there was definitely something wrong with her. She didn't smile once until after she escaped, and her blue eyes were crimson red." she said, her gaze moving to her parents. "Someone, orr *something, was controlling her. Hikari would never do something like this."
- Twenty Miles away from Imperial Capital -
Far away from the reach of the Imperial Capital, Hikari hopped off the back of the mole-like Danger Beast named Karkatus and looked up at it and the Danger Beast known as Xelles, the two watching as a slight transformation took hold with her in which her black hair shifted contrast to a bleached white.
"Xelles, Karkatus, I thank you for your assistance." she said blankly, her gaze darting over to theformer. "Find Gigardos and Skessa, tell them to meet Karkatus and I at the Bastion."
The fox demon Danger Beast nod its head once before it ran off towards the northeast, its gargantuan body vanishing once it jumped down into a nearby canyon. Now with it gone, Hikari leaped back onto the back of Karkatus and reared it to turned its gaze to the far south, the location she had in mind coming into her brain like a long-lost memory that had faded away from the passing of time.
"It's time. Let us be off."
