THROUGH ETERNITY
CHAPTER 5 - VOLTAIRERussia. Three weeks after he had last seen it, and there he was again, except this time... he was locked up... in a cellar... in the house he called home.
Tala had woken up sometime during the flight, but had immediately fallen asleep again, due to tiredness. By the time he woke up for the second time, he was already in one of the cellars he recognized belonged to the house he lived in... the Hiwatari household. And that wasn't yet the worst part. Surely Voltaire knew about the situation, somehow, probably with a tracking device on him or something similar, and there was no way he'd let a "traitor" escape unharmed. No, Tala knew his employer, having lived with him almost for the same amount of time since he could remember... punishment was close, the blue-eyed boy could feel it in the air... and it wasn't going to be pretty.
But, surprisingly, that was the least of Tala's worries; his main concern at that time... was Kai, the crimson-eyed boy who the hunter had discovered to actually be a special kind of phoenix. He was in danger... and Tala knew it. Voltaire did want a phoenix for his collection, which consisted of, for the luckiest animals, stuffed rare creatures... for the others, not so lucky ones, it was eternal confinement in the rich man's backyard. Either way, it wouldn't make a special phoenix very happy.
And Tala knew that Kai had been caught, somehow... perhaps a bond had been formed between them in those few weeks... a bond by which the redhead could feel the phoenix was getting weaker and weaker.
Locked up in a cell, after living all your life freely in the large area that spread along one of the Japanese volcano areas... it was a drastic change.
And a sad one too.
Unfortunately, that was Kai's situation. Locked and tied up in an air-conditioned room that was getting colder and colder each second... it was slowly killing him, since he was weak in cold areas. His naked body was used to the hot feeling of the volcanoes and the lava, but it was shivering after only three minutes of being in that room... that cold stone room. His fire would no longer lit up, due to his weak and cold body, therefore using it to warm up was out of question.
But the colder it got, the weaker he became. . . and there was a thin line between getting weak and perishing for good.
"I should never have trusted him! He must have faked the whole thing, told them where Dranzer and I were while we couldn't hear... and when our guards were down... they caught us! Dranzer, where are you? Where am I? Please, get me out of here... and I'll personally make sure he doesn't survive a second encounter with me!" Kai murmured, assured that Tala had planned it all along. When the blond guy had knocked out the redhead, the bluenette and the red phoenix had been temporarily surprised, almost coming out of their hiding place to aid, but that small amount of doubt was enough time to let down their guards... and get captured.
"Dranzer..."
"Forget your friend, phoenix, she's resting somewhere very far from this place," a voice interrupted Kai's thoughts. "I'm Ian, do you have a name?"
Silence.
"Fine then, don't speak! But either way, you're coming with me. Voltaire-sama wants to check on you and confirm what you are before giving you the honor of entering his collection," the short boy replied as a taller one approached the bluenette.
"I'm Spencer," the second one said as he picked Kai up and placed him on his shoulders. "Please come with me."
Kai merely puffed, but having no energy to fight back... remained quiet and still as he was carried through the great halls of the Hiwatari mansion.
He was dragged for a good few minutes, until they finally reached a spacious room equipped with the most advanced computers and technological equipment, a few personnel sitting before every one or two of them. In the center of the laboratory, stood an elegant man around his 60s.
"Ah, Spencer, Ian, glad you brought our guest! Lay him down here," the old man said, motioning to a laboratory bed, where Kai was gently laid. "Bryan is fetching our other guest, so let's hurry with these tests. Commence check-up!"
As soon as the order was given, a great of lights turned on, and the old man started a conversation with Kai. "Hello, my friend. I'm Voltaire... Voltaire Hiwatari. Do you have a name I can call you by?"
Silence.
"No? Well, it won't matter much. Please behave yourself as we run these tests, it won't take long."
More silence… except for the soft beeping and humming of the computers in work. Soon a digitalized voice filled the room. "Operations completed. Readings indicate internal hyperthermia, critical external hypothermia, 83 of a phoenix's genetic formation, human anatomy. Proceeding conclusion is... positive."
At these last words specifically, Voltaire's smile broadened as he turned to Kai, caressing the boy's right cheek. "So you really are a phoenix. Amazing! I can't wait to have you in my collection! Ian! Get the needle, I want this over with fast!"
"Yes, sir!"
As angry and as he was, but without much energy to even move, Kai could do nothing except observe and accept, secretly wishing for a miracle to happen...
In a locked cell, a young man, tied with his hands behind his back, sat wondering...
"Kai! Where are you?"
"Speaking to yourself now, Tala?" A cold voice interrupted the redhead's monologue.
Looking up, the hunter saw who was at his door. "Bryan! What the hell do you guys think you're doing?! What was that all about?!"
"Look, we discussed this and concluded it was wrong... even if it's for Voltaire-sama, so hurry up and come with me so we can free that weird phoenix before it's too late!" The lilac-haired boy said as he cut the ropes binding Tala's hands behind him with a small pocketknife. "Hurry up!"
And that he did. No sooner had the ropes been cut, the blue-eyed boy was already halfway running down the hallways, making Bryan have to run a full dash to catch up.
"You seem really worried about it, like you were friends since long ago, but you only just met with it, Tala. Was it enough time to get to know it?"
"Stop treating him like an object, Bryan! His name is Kai! And yes, I do feel like we have been friends forever, as if we have a strong bond between us; it's... weird."
"So, what happened?"
"Well, Kai got trapped under a rock while observing me, I helped him. Then he ran away, I followed him... and he tried to kill me in order to protect his friends, the phoenixes, knowing I had come for them, but... well, I turned out not to be a serial killer, like he thought I was, so he helped me and we got to know ourselves better. He's a good person, although way too different from us, but that's to be expected. Kai's a phoenix, not a human, even if he looks more like us than like his own kind. He doesn't deserve what Voltaire-sama wants to do with him!"
"Hum. Well, if you say so, then we're with you. I don't want to go against Voltaire-sama, not after all he's done for us, but I can't let this cruelty be done either."
"Thanks, Bry."
"Call me that again and I'll have second thoughts about this."
Tala muffled a laugh... "same old Bryan," he thought. However, he quickly erased it from his mind, there were important things at hand.
When they finally arrived in the laboratory, Tala gasped at the sight before him. "KAI!"
At his shout, Voltaire turned to look at him, as did the occasional scientists present. "Tala?! So its name is Kai, huh? Guess you were able to make more progress with it than I was, but... what are you doing here? Where's Bryan?!"
"Right here, Voltaire-sama!" The cold hunter announced, appearing behind the redhead.
"Why on Earth is Tala free?! What do you think you're doing?"
"Voltaire-sama, what have you done?" Tala asked, despair consuming him as he ran towards Kai's motionless body, which was still lying on the bed in the middle of the room. "Kai!"
When he reached the human-like phoenix, Tala grabbed his hand, only to immediately let go of it right after. "He's... freezing!" The redhead said, touching the other's forehead. Sure enough, the warm feeling he emanated was gone, replaced by a very cold skin. "Kai…" the boy whispered, looking straightly at his unmoving friend's face.
"What's the surprise, Tala? You knew this would happen. The only way to kill a Fire Phoenix: freeze it... and that's what we did," the old man explained, holding up an empty needle in his hand. "See this? We injected liquid nitrogen in his system. You know what the temperature of that is? Believe me, it's way cold. Now, this special creature is ready to be stuffed and added to my collection!"
"No," Ian whispered.
"What?" The grey-haired man asked, surprised, as he turned around to face the Demolition Boys Hunting Pack.
"Voltaire-sama, please stop." Spencer pleaded.
"This isn't something a normal human being would do. It's insane!" Bryan almost yelled.
"Voltaire-sama, you're out of yourself! Look at that! Even if that was a phoenix, he looks just like one of us! Don't you feel like you just killed a normal human being?!" Ian tried once more.
"Please, let's stop all this before we end up in jail for it! This whole thing is illegal... and even though you have so much to lose, you're still doing it! Voltaire-sama, please, stop this nonsense!" Spencer reasoned.
The room remained silent, the only sounds were Tala's muffled sobs, as he hugged the bluenette to himself, a few stray tears running down his face.
However, before Voltaire could answer or anything else could happen, two loud screeches pierced the ears of all present, breaking the glass panels on the roof... and then, to the surprise of everyone, except Tala, two giant phoenixes flew in, hovering above them with greatness, but with a killer expression in their eyes.
Especially after landing their sights on the center of the room below them, where two figures were, one of these the one the two magnificent creatures were searching for…
Except he didn't seem as lively as he had last time they'd laid eyes on him…
END of CHAPTER 5 - VOLTAIREA.N.: Guess who? R&R, please, I'm signing out!
Syaoran-Lover