.Hack: Relapse
A .Hack fanfiction by Renfro Calhoun
Disclaimer: Project .Hack and attached characters/concepts belong to Cyber Connect and Bandai.
Notes: Takes place during Outbreak. Parentheses = thoughts, brackets = writing or text. I was going to just put up 24 and call it a day, but I feel bad about missing my own deadline and making you people wait even longer, so I figured I owe you all. Read and enjoy :)
BTW, I changed from using Notepad to MSWord, as .txt files kept losing the backslashes and marks when I uploaded them, which was mildly annoying. Please keep your eyes open for any formatting mishaps and the like, just in case, and let me know if you spot anything; knowing is half the battle!
Chapter 25 – Violent Confession
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A bright flash and thunderous explosion preceded a sharp buzzing noise as the bullet flew past Kite's ear; he feinted right just before the shot, and nearly stumbled as he tried to stay out of the line of fire. BlackRose took off in the opposite direction, running towards the far wall.
"I think I figured it out," said the apparition, trailing Kite with his gun. "Why I'm here, what he was trying to do. Aura was the real reason he was here... he knew she needed help to grow, to mature and become strong enough to stop Morganna. I don't know how it works on a technical level, but it does."
Kite kept his eyes locked on the gun, breaking into a full-fledged sprint; the trigger was pulled again, and the Twin Blade swore he felt the heat of the bullet as it passed by, missing his arm by an inch. The shooter's voice had a desperate quality to it, and Kite heard an occasional straining, as if he was trying to fight the force prompting him to fire.
"He wanted to stop her, so he tried to use Aura, but she discovered his plan, and found him... that's how I got here. How she got me."
(I've got to get closer to stop him,) thought Kite, searching in vain for cover. (Maybe when he stops to reload...)
"Vak Kruz!"
Tiny flames appeared in a tight sphere around Harald, which then contracted without warning and exploded; he jumped away from the center of the blast, but not nearly quick enough to escape. The explosion blew him back several paces, appearing to be physically unharmed but clearly in a daze.
Kite looked over at BlackRose, who was standing calmly with her sword at her waist. Feeling his gaze, she shouted to him. "Use magic! It's like any other monster!"
The sheer amount of sense the idea made nearly bowled him over. (Why didn't I think of that??) he yelled in his head as he started digging through his inventory again, looking for the most powerful scroll in his arsenal.
"That was me who wrote the letter you found!" shouted Harald. "I was trying to warn Seijiro about Aura, about the Phases." Raising his pistol again, he added, "That's when they tracked her down. If she's destroyed... no, killed... then it's all over."
Before Kite could begin casting, Harald fired at BlackRose, who raised her blade just in time to block. The bullet slammed hard into her weapon; her body quivered under the impact but she kept her balance, as though her feet were rooted to the ground.
Raising one of his blades skyward, Kite invoked the scroll he had chosen, and a series of lightning bolts ripped out of the clear, cloudless sky to strike the apparition, each more powerful than the last. He convulsed and cringed, groaning as if in pain, and stumbled about momentarily before righting himself.
"Rrggh... I couldn't send it, though, I don't know how or why not. It was after I got fragmented... I thought Skeith, or one of the other phases, or something was after me. I saw it... it was horrible, I saw it... but it didn't do anything. Just sat there, watching me. Then it hit me... it's because she still had control over me. Still had a use for me."
Harald suddenly lashed out with his weapon arm, firing the remaining three rounds in the vague direction of the Twin Blade; he easily evaded, and watched as Harald righted himself and broke open the revolver to reload.
"BlackRose, now!"
Together they charged him, weapons at the ready. He barely got a single bullet in the chamber before they got close enough to attack. He leapt back, hurriedly closing the gun and thumbing the cylinder until the bullet was primed for firing.
"I was at the field when you found it," said Harald, his voice sounding more exhausted than desperate. "I wanted someone to find it, but I didn't know who you were until I saw you, heard you talking. That's when I knew what she wanted me to do." His eyes met briefly with Kite's. "You saw me... I tried to stop myself, but I couldn't. She wouldn't let me."
Kite tried his best to ignore the man's words, subconsciously thinking he could check the logs later. He lunged forward with his left blade, catching Harald's left flank as the apparition tried to twist away. His target felt surprisingly solid, and despite his ethereal appearance the metal cut in to and slid out of Harald's gray-toned cloth and flesh as if he were alive, or at least no less substantial than any other creature Kite had faced.
The bite of his blade was a pinprick compared to the chop at his back by BlackRose; with a shouted "Hah!" she slammed her massive sword horizontally into his back, cutting well over an inch deep, though no blood was drawn or flesh was exposed.
"Ohhh!" he cried out, struggling to get away as they continued their attacks. "I don't know the real Harald any more than either of you do..." he was cut off as Kite hacked viciously at his neck, cleaving straight through. "I don't even remember anything before a few years back, when it happened."
With a sudden burst of dexterity he pried himself away from their almost synchronous strikes, opening the revolver again. "She set this up just for you... I don't know what she did, but don't let me hit you."
"Are we doing any damage?!" shouted BlackRose, staring in disbelief at Harald, who showed no physical evidence that he had been at all injured, aside from his hobbled posture and pained expression.
As Harald resumed reloading, Kite took his eyes off him for just a second and glanced at the targeting data on his HUD. To his surprise, there was none; although it recognized the apparition as a target, there was no data regarding its name or status, not even a garbled hit point counter to suggest invincibility. Just an empty space where the name should have been, and, if the counter was to be believed, no hit points.
"You have to stop me!" he begged, sliding the sixth and final bullet into its waiting chamber. "Somehow... use data drain! Do something!"
"Split up!" ordered BlackRose, ducking left as before, and Kite in the opposite direction.
Harald fired again and again, alternating between the two. "She did something to this thing... you probably figured out it isn't supposed to be here. Don't let me hit you!"
Kite brought his right arm up, trying to train his hacking ability on the spectral gunman. There was no response, no tremble from his arm nor any other indication that he could use the bracelet. "It's not working! Do we need to do more damage?!"
"I wasn't meant to have statistics, or be a monster or anything... I don't know. There's so much I don't know!" Between the shouts and gunfire, his ragged gasps and pants could be heard. "It's been so long... I'm tired. I shouldn't be, but I am."
A sixth pull of the trigger spent the last bullet at BlackRose, and she nimbly evaded. "I'm so tired," he repeated, again stopping to reload, his pockets a seemingly endless font of spare ammunition. "Tired of waiting, tired of trying to figure this out, tired of everything."
They closed in on him again, reaching him almost simultaneously, and again before he could load more than a single bullet. Harald was quicker this time, and skipped backwards; locking the cylinder in place, he raised the gun high and smashed the butt across Kite's face. The attack did minimal damage but succeeded in stopping his attack, if only for the second Harald needed to rush BlackRose.
She brought her blade up to strike, but this time he was too fast; his free left hand lashed out and gripped her wrist, squeezing it firmly through the purple gauntlet. His hold was awkward, but it was enough to keep her from swinging her sword. He followed up by thrusting his head forward, knocking it harshly against hers and catching her off-guard.
As she jerked back from the head butt, she heard him continue. "I just want to sleep," he hissed, followed by a sharp sucking noise that could have been him taking a breath. The pistol glinted in the sun as he brought it around, and she freed up one hand to push it away.
Kite's shuffling footsteps cued him to an impending attack, and he responded with a firm back-kick, his legs just long enough to out-reach his attempted swing. The thick heel of the shoe caught the Twin Blade square in the jaw, sending him reeling backwards.
The distraction was sufficient for BlackRose to free her captive hand; she awkwardly lifted the heavy blade and jammed the hilt into Harald's face, the tip poking at his eye. The apparition howled in pain, stumbling back and clutching the eye with his left hand.
A might chop from one of Kite's swords cleaved through his right arm, and he cried out again; the weapon left no permanent damage, but the resulting pain – or whatever it was he felt – caused him to drop the pistol, which clattered loudly to the ground.
As Harald resumed struggling with Kite, BlackRose took a better look at the fallen revolver, and noticed for the first time that it looked more solid, and less supernatural, than its former owner.
("She set this up just for you..." there's something more to it,) she thought. (It has to be more than just a weapon. And if he's not taking any damage...)
Sheathing her sword, she marched forward, knelt down, and gingerly picked up the firearm. To her surprise, it registered to the touch; her mind knew that she was still holding her controller in reality, but she could nonetheless feel the ridges in the handgrip, the icy coldness of the trigger despite its recent use. The sensations chilled her to the bone, knowing that this was something that should not be.
Slowly she raised the pistol, pointing it at the apparition, who had his hands around one of Kite's wrists and was being subjected to a series of savage thrusts from the other blade.
(What is this,) she almost said, her trembling hands training the sight on Harald's chest. Instinctively mimicking the countless movies and TV shows she had seen, her thumb pressed into the hammer and drew it back. (What in the world is happening?)
"Kite!" she shouted. "Get back!"
BlackRose waited until the red-clad warrior disentangled himself from Harald's grasp and scrambled away; he got five steps before a sideways glance at her caused him to stop and stare.
Seeing what was about to happen, Harald ran straight towards her, hands balled into fists. "Do it!" he growled. "Do it now!"
She hesitantly squeezed the trigger, as if the weapon was just as likely to shoot her as it was her target. The tiny hammer snapped forward, and her entire body shook from the force of the explosion.
All watched as the bullet sailed unerringly towards Harald, moving faster than the eye could see; it punched through his upper chest and out the back, spinning him around and blasting him off his feet in a cloud of blood. The bullet struck the back wall of the enclosure, bouncing off with a loud PING mere seconds before Harald crumpled to the floor.
The ghostly figure gave no cry of pain, no audible indication that he had been hit; conversely, blood poured freely from the wounds to his chest and back, a dark pool that gathered beneath him and slowly spread outward.
"Thank you," he said in a steady, yet quiet voice.
He twitched once, and his body began to disintegrate, the area around the wound fracturing into tiny shards that drifted into the air and vanished. The hole grew wider, eventually dividing what was left of the body into halves, and within seconds the rest had evaporated, leaving nothing behind, not even the blood.
BlackRose stood stunned, with eyes wide open and lips parted; she let out a sudden cry of alarm as the revolver disappeared in a similar fashion, gradually blown away on the simulated wind as though suddenly made of sand. With its departure went her ability to feel it, and she couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief as the alien sensation faded from memory.
"BlackRose... are you okay?"
She came to her senses and found Kite standing near her, appraising her with concern. Lacking time and inclination to craft a clever or confident response, she simply nodded, if shakily so.
"Y-yeah," she muttered. "Did... did I kill him?"
He watched her for just a moment, and then reached out to place a hand on her shoulder. She finched, and he thought about taking it away, but instead squeezed reassuringly. With a small smile, he said, "I think you set him free."
All of a sudden, the enclosure faded from sight, replaced by the alleyway they had been traversing before the encounter.
There was a soft humming from behind, and both turned to see a familiar NPC shopkeeper, golden teleport rings drifting across his stocky frame and rendering him opaque.
A frown crossed his face as he spoke. "What the hell is going on here? I was getting reports of bizarre activity in the Delta root town, but something was blocking me out. Where have you two been?"
Kite took a few steps closer, and cocked his head upward to meet Lios' penetrating stare. "I think we found out something you should know," he answered matter-of-factly.
- End of Chapter 25