The Blue Pheasant Flies On
Chapter 4: Prison
Gray and Lyon sat on one side of the train's benches with Ur sitting opposite of them. Behind her, Kuzan was taking up an entire section for himself due to his height. The tall man managed to sit with his legs bent at an angle and could talk to the others by leaning his head back over the seat. It made for a strange sight for everyone. "So where is this Black Vox prison at?" Kuzan asked. After they rescued Nano and returned her to her parents they had been asked to transport the members of Chrono Noise to the magical prison called Black Vox. Seeing that they had no set travel route and that they'd have to take the train anyways, the four had agreed to the request. They had met up with Torch, the head jailer of Black Vox, and handed over the Chrono Noise members already. It was nice to get them out of their hair and put some magic-cancelling shackles on them. Prolonged freezing wasn't beneficial to their health and it was annoying to have to keep freezing the prisoners so that they wouldn't have a chance to escape.
"It's still a ways away to the south. Black Vox is located far away from civilization in a rocky desert. The jailers will take the prisoners away in some magic four-wheelers and then we'll never have to see them again," Ur answered.
Kuzan hummed in response before asking his next question, "What kind of prison is Black Vox—besides magical?"
"Black Vox is the most secure prison on Earth Land. It's a massive prison that floats above the ground and is staffed by the jailers, who act as their military force. Black Vox can only be opened from the inside and the cells themselves are smaller versions of the prison that can only be opened from the outside. It is home to only the most dangerous of prisoners and is equipped with anti-magic technology so that it can even hold mages. It's said to be virtually impenetrable," Ur explained.
Kuzan snorted in disbelief, "I've heard that before."
"Oh, really?" Ur asked with a raised eyebrow, hoping that Kuzan would spill a little more about his past.
He obliged, "We have a similar prison called Impel Down. A giant prison that holds the worst of the worst, with six levels built underneath the prison that is located in monster-infested waters. Each level is better secured than the last and Impel Down was supposed to be impenetrable."
"What happened?" Gray asked. Kuzan looked at him and Lyon and saw that they were enraptured with his story. It made sense, Impel Down was only scary to those that understood the horrors of the six levels. To everyone else it was just a really good prison.
"There were two breakouts from Impel Down," Kuzan began, "One was Shiki the Golden Lion, one of the strongest criminals to ever live. He had cut off his own feet to escape and made it through all six levels single-handedly. It was regarded as a mistake and after that all prisoners were shackled on both their hands and feet with magic-cancelling shackles." Kuzan made sure to avoid mentioning the Marines and to switch Seastone to magic-cancelling. "The last and greatest escape was done by an upcoming criminal who not only snuck in to Impel Down, but also managed to start a mass riot and break out with over two hundred and forty prisoners." He leaned back even farther to look them in the eyes, albeit upside-down, "So I'm a little skeptical when people mention impenetrable prisons these days."
Gray and Lyon began to excitedly discuss Impel Down and Black Vox among themselves. Trying to decide which prison was better and how strong the prisoners that broke out had to have been. Ur just rolled her eyes at their antics and turned to Kuzan when he tapped her shoulder. "How do you know so much about Black Vox? That was more in-depth than the average person should know."
"Black Vox is the only prison around her for miles. Back when I was in a guild we'd sometimes have to drop criminals off there depending on how strong they were. Most jails can't hold the stronger dark mages, so they get sent here."
Kuzan raised a brow, "Then why are we bringing Chrono Noise there. They can't be strong enough to warrant taking up space in Black Vox."
Ur shrugged, "It's probably temporary. They'll get transferred to a different prison later. Only the guild master could be a big enough threat to be put in Black Vox and that'll depend on how much room they have."
Kuzan nodded. That made more sense. He checked the time and began to stretch out. "I'm going to stretch my legs for a bit." Ur waved a hand to show that she heard him and Kuzan began to make his way through the train cars. He spent some time stretching in the space between the cars and then made his way to the prisoner car. It wasn't that he didn't trust the head jailer, but Kuzan had always been a believer in making sure that a job was done right the first time so you wouldn't have to waste time doing it over. A quick check showed that the dark mages were all chained up and their magic suppressed. The head jailer had agreed to let them leave the ice covering their mouths after he heard how much shouting Nez would be doing. He casually waved a hand and made sure that the ice wouldn't melt before turning to go back to his car.
Suddenly, danger flashed across Kuzan's Haki and he barely had time to turn his body to ice before the car he was on was crushed.
The three ice mages were violently thrown from their seats when the train came to a sudden stop. Ur was fast enough to protect them with a one-handed shield. It wasn't her preferred method of casting but it was faster than two-handed casting and it was enough to protect them from the crash. Ur dropped her shield and looked over Gray and Lyon, "Are you two okay? Did you hit anything in the crash?"
"I'm fine," Gray muttered while rubbing his head.
"The shield's what hurt us," Lyon grumbled while shaking his arm. "What was that?"
"I don't know, but it can't be good." Ur surveyed the damage. Their car was lying at a slight angle and the windows were broken, but that was about it for damage. She headed towards the door, "Come on, boys. Let's go see what happened."
The trio left their car and went outside to view the damage. What they saw was pretty bad. Someone had apparently dropped part of the hillside with a tree onto one of the cars. It was completely crushed and had caused the entire train to be derailed. The rails underneath the car were also crushed and warped, so even if they managed to get the train back on the rails they'd have to do something about the tracks as well.
"Whoa," Gray whispered in surprise at the damage.
Ur focused on the location of the attack, "That's the prisoner car," she gasped. Kuzan had went to check on the prisoners. He might have been in the car when it had been hit. Ur rushed over to the wreckage while calling for her students to join her.
The wreck was worse up close. There was blood leaking out from the twisted metal and it didn't take a genius to guess what happened to the Chrono Noise guild members. Ur just hoped that Kuzan's blood wasn't mixed in with theirs. She examined the projectile and cursed. The tree's roots had held the earth together when it impacted, and it was still a mostly intact chunk of a hill that was nearly as big as the train car. It wouldn't be easy to lift. "Gray. Lyon. Help me lift this off of the car." Ur didn't wait to see if the boys were going to listen and instead made a giant set of hands that grew out of the ground and began to lift the earth. A second pair of smaller hands joined her closely followed by third. Together, the ice mages lifted the chuck off the train car and set it to the side.
"Kuzan, are you alive?" Ur yelled at the wreckage. She didn't wait for a response and began to fill the car with ice to push the metal back into place.
"Could he have even survived that?" Gray hesitantly asked.
"Of course. He has an elemental body," Ur absently said, unsure if she was reassuring Gray or reminding herself. Kuzan would have pulled himself from the rubble by now if he could. But it couldn't be possible that someone as strong as he was would die from something as simple as a falling tree.
"Arara," a familiar voice drawled out. "The downside of being a solid elemental is that you can't just move around things." Ice began to come together from across the wreckage of the car and formed into the tall man. Kuzan cracked his neck, "I hate being stuck in chunks like that. Always leaves me feeling stiff when I finish pulling myself together."
Ur let out a sigh of relief, "Thank the gods." He'd had her worried there for a minute.
The boys were more obvious about their relief, but Kuzan just brushed them off. It wasn't the first time he'd been stuck between a rock and a hard place and it probably wouldn't be the last. There were more important things to focus on. "What happened?"
"I don't know. We were shaken around when the train was attacked and then came out here to find you and the prisoner car crushed," Ur explained.
"Let's check the other side," Kuzan suggested.
They climbed over the train car just in time to watch a group of men drag the head jailer into a strange looking vehicle. Before the four mages could act, the vehicle lifted off into the air and began to fly away.
"They must be taking Torch to Black Vox," Ur guessed. Torch's position as a member of the Magic Council was only a formality. His position as Head Jailer of Black Vox got him the title, but he wasn't involved in Council business unless someone was being sent to Black Vox. There was no other reason to kidnap him.
Kuzan judged the distance between them and the vehicle and grabbed the three mages at his side. "Brace yourselves," he warned before taking off after the vehicle. Using Kamisori, a combination of the Soru and Geppo techniques, Kuzan was able to keep the vehicle in sight, but it was too fast for him to keep up with without putting Gray and Lyon in danger. His false leg wasn't helping any either.
Eventually, the landscape shifted to an arid wasteland and the large floating prison of Black Vox came into view. The vehicle stopped in midair and Kuzan saw his chance. He picked up the pace slightly and made it to the vehicle as it flew into Black Vox. Kuzan set the others down and then sat down to catch his breath. Using Kamisori was normally a strenuous technique and taking how long he had been using it into account it was impressive that he had managed to keep up. Kuzan wiped the sweat from his brow and waved off Ur's concern. "I'm fine. Just need to catch my breath," he told her before she could say anything. He wouldn't be much of an admiral if he was out of commission because of a little running on air.
Ur couldn't help rolling her eyes at Kuzan. That little trick had obviously tired him out. Judging by how he had started to break his prosthetic towards the end and had to keep recreating a new one for each jump. He hadn't been using magic to propel them all through the air, that was pure physical strength. She hadn't seen anyone that strong since that one guy she had met before Deliora had started to rampage, Gil-something. She didn't know what he was kicking off of, but that couldn't have been easy, especially based on how heavily he was breathing and sweating. He was trying to play it off, but she wasn't having any of it. "Stay here. We'll take care of these guys," she told him. Ur stood up and motioned to her students, "Let's go, boys."
Lyon and Gray fell into line on either side of Ur and they walked around to the front of the vehicle. There they found two groups of people wearing uniforms. One was the group from the train that were dressed identically in dark clothes, blindfolds, and with long ponytails. Their leader was holding Torch aloft without touching him and Ur noted him as the biggest threat. Telekinetic Magic was dangerous on its own, but especially when used by a dark mage.
The other group was dressed in the white uniforms and square cloth masks of the Black Vox staff. Their leader was a man with poofy spiked hair and was holding a strange staff. He appeared to be trying to negotiate with the dark mage.
"When I give the signal, freeze as many of them as you can," Ur ordered. She didn't take her eyes off of the hostage situation before her, but felt Gray and Lyon nod next to her. Good. They needed to focus. Ur waited until she saw the Black Vox leader nod to one of his underlings and he began to type into a computer. "Now," Ur said and covered the platform they were standing on in ice.
Everyone was caught off guard when their feet were frozen to the floor by Ur's sudden attack. They were easy pickings for Gray and Lyon as they ran through the ranks and froze everything they touched. Legs, arms, and torsos were engulfed in ice and threw off the dark mages' balance. Some tried to remove the ice with their magic only to be attacked by birds and bullets made of ice. Gray grinned while shooting the mages and freezing even more of their bodies on contact while Lyon sported a smirk as he sent his flock of birds crashing into their heads.
Meanwhile, Ur bypassed all the grunts to focus on the leader and Torch. The leader couldn't turn around while frozen up past his ankles, so he tossed Torch aside to free up his magic and make short work of his restraints. He turned around to face Ur only to find her right on top of him. She slammed her fist down on her palm, "Ice-Make: Hammer!" A large mallet made of ice appeared over the leader's head and dropped on him like a judge's gavel. He wasn't going anywhere.
Ur looked back to see that her boys had taken care of all the dark mages easily. They hadn't managed to do much thanks to the element of surprise, but Ur would put money on her either Gray or Lyon taking them in a straight fight. She had taught them after all.
Hearing a groan, Ur turned back to see that the Black Vox staff had converged on Torch to see if he was okay. He was insisting that he was fine and getting up on his own when she walked over to him. "Fancy meeting you here, Torch-san," Ur said with a smile.
"Heh. You're the one that seems out of place, Ur-san," Torch responded while rolling his shoulders and head. Being held hostage was rough on a man of his age. "I can't tell you how glad I am to see you and your students. Without you they would've released Drum from his cell."
"It's no problem at all," Ur assured him. "We couldn't just sit by and let them get away with kidnapping you. Right, boys?" She asked Gray and Lyon as they arrived. They had finished up freezing the dark mages and naturally wandered over to where Ur was standing in time to hear her ask them something.
"Right," Gray parroted. He didn't know what the question was, but he figured that that was the right answer.
Lyon was more flippant with his answer, "Yeah, whatever."
"You all have my thanks," Torch told her with a bow. "But what about that other man with you, the tall one?"
"Kuzan? He's resting over there," Ur pointed at the vehicle. "He pushed himself too hard trying to keep up with your captors."
Before Torch could comment on that, a loud cracking noise was heard as one of the prison boxes was broken. The prisoner dropped down to land in front of everyone while rolling his shoulder. "Damn. You guys already beat them. There goes that job," the prisoner muttered in disappointment. He was a tall man with slicked back orange hair and stubble. He was wearing dark pants, white boots, and a black cloak that left his muscular chest, and more importantly, a black guild mark in the middle of said chest exposed.
All of the mages tensed at the prisoner's escape except for one. "Gildarts?!" Ur exclaimed in surprise. Speak of the devil. What the hell was he doing in a prison?
Gildarts studied Ur for a minute before his face relaxed in recognition, "Ur—!" His surprised call turned into a grunt of exertion when he spun around and blocked the ice saber that had attempted to cut him down from behind. He noticed the frost trying to creep its way down his arm and destroyed it with his magic along with the saber. "Nice try," Gildarts told Kuzan with a smile. He had been cooped up in that box for too long. It would be good to let off some steam. And this guy looked like he could take a punch or two.
Kuzan's eyes widened in shock. Shanks?! Here?! How? He jumped back from his opponent and took a better look. No. It was just a man that looked like Shanks. This man's hair was orange not red, he had stubble, no scars over his eye, and the biggest giveaway was the fact that he had both his arms. Kuzan flexed his fingers as they reformed. The man may have looked like Shanks, but he had a power similar to Whitebeard's. And wasn't that an unholy combination if he had ever heard one. Kuzan had felt his hands shatter when the man used whatever magic he had to break his blade. He was going to have to be careful.
The two men squared off and began to feel each other out. The temperature dropped and ice spread out from Kuzan's feet while his breath left a cloud in the air. Gildarts smiled with his teeth and wisps of white magic began to appear around him as the platform cracked under him in a slowly expanding circle.
Most of the watchers were sent to their knees and had their teeth start chattering at the display of power. Except for Ur. She calmly formed two hands out of ice behind the two men and slapped them upside the head. Instantly the oppressive power vanished, and the two men rubbed the bumps forming on the back of their skulls. "What do you two idiots think you're doing?!" she demanded.
Once Ur had gotten the two mages to calm down and explain that no one was attacking the prison anymore the situation was diffused. The dark mages were rounded up and put into temporary holding cells until they could be transferred to a different prison and Gildarts began to explain why he was locked up in a maximum security prison.
"So that's how I managed to get in here," he finished with a smug grin. "Rather ingenious if I do say so myself."
Ur rolled her eyes again. "Yes, congratulations. But that doesn't explain why you're in here and how you got out."
"That last one is rather important," Torch interrupted. He was standing next to the poofy-haired guy from before who was apparently named Grog. "Black Vox has never had an escape before and we need to know how you got out so that we can prevent it from happening again."
"Ah, that's simple. See, you guys have those boxes of yours that are supposed to prevent anyone from escaping from them so you don't bother to block any magic other than the kinds that deal with space-time, right? So, I just smashed my way out when I heard that you had beaten the Five Bridge Familia," Gildarts casually said. "As for why I'm here," a dopey grin grew across Gildarts's face and he laughed a little. "Someone asked me to return a favor."
"That's not an answer," Ur deadpanned at Gildarts in annoyance.
The Black Vox staff were a little more concerned with Gildarts's explanation of his escape. "T-that shouldn't be possible. All the prisons are a copy of Black Vox itself. They can't be broken. The prisons constantly rotate the areas facing the inside and repairs itself with magic stolen from its prisoner. The material that makes up the entire prison is the hardest and sturdiest in existence. After its treated there isn't any way to break it. What you're describing is impossible," Torch explained in a kind of horrified, detached awe. His mind was stuck trying to process what had happened with what he knew to be fact. It was impossible to break out of a Black Vox prison with nothing but power, yet he was talking to man that claimed to have done that. It just didn't make sense.
Gildarts laughed nervously and rubbed the back of his head. "Oops? Sorry? I'll give you the address to where you can bill the damages," he offered.
Torch numbly accepted and left with Grog to check to see if there was anything wrong with the prison and maybe sit down and have a drink for a bit. Ease some of the stress away. It had been a rather long day.
Gildarts turned to the traveling Ice Mages after Torch left. "So, what are you up to, Ur? I can see that you got around to raising the newest generation," he said with a lecherous grin and waggling eyebrows. "But you told me you wanted to raise them up north. Something happen?"
Ur noticed Gildarts's eyes dart down to her leg with that last question. She subtly moved it behind her while introducing her students with emphasis, "Gildarts, these are my students, Gray and Lyon." The two said their hellos. "And this is Kuzan. He helped us with a problem up north and is travelling west with us for now."
Gildarts ran an appraising eye over the three and was satisfied with what he saw. The kids were pretty strong for their age and the Kuzan guy had felt pretty powerful when they had briefly clashed. Ur was also implying that he had taken care of whatever had cost Ur her leg. It was a solid traveling group, but she was avoiding his question. Gildarts thought it over and decided that it wasn't any of his business. "Well nice to meet you guys. Anything that a Westerner like me can do to help you out?"
Ur paused for a moment and gained a thoughtful look. She pointed at Gildarts's chest, more specifically, at the symbol on his chest and asked a question that raised four pairs of eyebrows, "Can you tell me more about your guild?"
A/N: I'm tired. Happy Halloween. Later.