The Darkest Hour
By Ultima66
Chapter 1
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Life and death has always been an evergoing cycle, and has lasted eternity. What is it all really? Is life really the main priority of all? Is death really the end?
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I waited. My eyes were closed, but I knew everything that was going on around me. It was all a matter of time, now. Suzu would show up, and I would have part of my vengeance; a sick, untold vengeance that had no beginning nor end. It was this vengeance, though completely unfelt by me, that pushed me to be so evil. I was mad at something. It wasn't the world, it wasn't any specific person. It was absolutely nothing I could point out. I was just simply mad. Nothing meant anything to me. I was driven by an untold destiny, and untold force. It was absolutely unexplained, yet in itself the truth lie in its complete and perfect whole.
I sensed it. The time had come. Suzu had shown up at the outside of the Ymir forest. I made haste. I dashed through the plains next to the forest and quickly entered from the side opposite the edge Suzu had arrived at. The various creatures of the forest attacked. I simply ignored them they were not important to me. I dashed past their strikes and quickly made it to the ninja village. Then I started looking for my target.
I knew everything about our movement. I could sense anything I wanted to track, so I knew exactly where in that tangled maze of a forest we were going to meet. I found a spot of the woods that was relatively empty that I knew she would pass. Then I continued waiting.
"What are you doing here, traveler?" asked a voice from behind me.
I wheeled around. An elf was standing in the cover of the trees, watching over me. He had long, blue hair, and was wearing white robes. He was obviously suspicious of my actions and motive, but I didn't care too much.
"Look. I have nothing to settle with you. Please leave me be, for your own good," I replied.
"But I must conquer. This is our forest. Besides the ninja village, the entire forest of Ymir belongs to us. Without our permission, you have no right to be here," he replied.
"Like I said, it's for your own good that you leave me be," I said, wasting no time in focusing on my real target.
"In that case, I suppose you'll have to be shown out," he replied. He was now holding up a bow at ready, staring at me with a glare that told me he was ready to shoot at me.
"For your own good," I said, on last time, letting it ring in his mind. I drew my sword and dashed before he even knew what was happening. In a split second, my sword had flown through his side and it had sliced his side open, sending blood pouring out away from me. I then held up the sword again and stabbed him in the chest, watching him drop his bow, releasing the arrow upwards into the limb of a tree. The bloody corpse, having a side sliced apart entirely, and a stab wound reaching through his entire chest and exiting the other side, could do little more than spit out blood, which flowed down his chin and then into the dirt, as I released him and heartlessly let him fall onto the ground.
"For... your... own.. good." I repeated slowly, "What did I tell you?" The blood began to let out a stench, but I didn't care. My target had fallen into the trap, and I had just completed my warmup.
Suzu, noticing the elf's corpse, dripping with newly spilled blood, and stepped into the clearing. I can't help but wonder that if she hadn't done this, would she still be alive? Of course, I highly doubt it, since a target of mine had never escaped me, but it still comes to mind.
She wore an orange ninja suit, and had a yellow scarf around her neck. She was relatively short, with brown hair tied back. She carefully walked towards the corpse.
"What the hell happened here?" she said, not noticing me, as I was hiding in the shade.
"Hello, Suzu, and welcome... to your grave," I said solemnly, lacking any sense of emotion at all.
Her eyes widened, and she reached for her katana. "Who the fuck are you and why are you here?" she yelled.
I gave a small grin, not implying happiness, but more gravely the evil that had taken place just a minute or two before. "I can't quite say, Fujibayashi Suzu. I have no name, not that I know of, and I have no real motive, just what I feel when I'm being pulled by a force I can't quite explain," I replied. My eyes showed no compassion, no mercy for this girl. She was just a target, nothing more.
"Dammit! Tell me who you are! How do you know me?" she yelled. She had now pulled the katana out of its sheath.
"That is all I can tell you. I do not even know anything further than that much, but I know one thing: you're a target," I simply stated. I felt nothing more than a machine feels, nothing more than just the knowledge that I was going to kill Suzu.
"Target? What's that supposed to mean? Tell me," Suzu asked, still yelling in anger and confusion. She had never witnessed a dead elf laying on the ground of the forest which both her and the elves called home.
"All I'm going to say is that it means you and the other so called 'heroes of time' are not going to be living for much longer. Besides, I have followed you for quite a while. You could say I have followed Cless for 150 years. I have been planning for this, and nothing ever escapes my plans," I said.
"You're after Cless? If that's how it is then I'm going to stop you, you bitch," she said, staring at me with a feeling of malice.
She ran at me with the katana in from of her. I felt it quaint how a warrior like Suzu would ever, knowing that I had the ability to at least dispatch an elven warrior, run right at me rather than play it safe from a distance. I jumped over her, holding my sword behind me so that she wouldn't have a chance to strike at me in midair. She pulled out 3 stars from somewhere in the ninja suit and threw them at me. I landed fast, wheeled around, and slashed at the stars, knocking them to the ground. She put up her katana and drew spiked from both her sleeves, holding them like claws. Then she proceeded to toss them in two flurries at me. I blocked the first volley, but it seemed as if the second volley was going to strike me.
Within inches of my body, a wall of energy suddenly blazed up, blocking the strike. If vanished as rapidly as it had appeared and then I charged for her. We parried and struck for a few seconds, my sword to her katana, then we broke apart and jumped to the trees. I then slashed into the air, letting loose a burning wave of fire from my sword. It headed for Suzu, who jumped out of the way, then cleanly sliced down the upwards portion of the tree. We both jumped to another tree to avoid the falling mass of wood and leaves. I could catch sight of her slightly slipping on the jump to avoid the tree.
"You're quite a skilled warrior," she said to me.
"I know you're getting tired," I said. I could see her breathing heavily, and I knew she was losing her agility from watching her slip.
Shock showed in her expression. She knew I was right. Here I was, someone no one knew, and several feet away from me, Fujibayashi Suzu, a hero of time, looking stunned. She was afraid, very afraid, if not for her own life for the lives of the others.
"You're tired. You know how this is going to end, but yet you deny it, because it is the worst possible scenario. Don't attempt to have any optimism in you; it won't do any good," I heartlessly stated, "just let me do this and you won't have to work as hard."
My words seemed to have a detrimental impact on her morale, something else I didn't expect from her. I thought she would be a much greater opponent, but apparently I was wrong on that aspect.
With a sudden burst of speed I jumped at Suzu, sword held forward. She quickly jumped out of the way, but as I expected, her reflexes were slowed. The blade flew through her arm, leaving a several-inch deep gash. She yelled out in pain. My sword, already covered in mostly dried blood, now had fresh blood on it again. I took the sight of blood satisfyingly, not sure why, but it was one of the few things that made me even the slightest bit cheery. Suzu's orange suit was now stained red on one arm, and she knew that arm wouldn't be able to be used in a fight any more.
She stared at me with angry eyes. Dark, but burning with hatred towards me. She still had her right arm, so she wouldn't be in too much trouble, or I suppose that was what she would have thought. "You bitch," was all that she said.
"What then? What are you going to do? There is nothing you CAN do, so please, give it up," I said.
She took no more of my threats. She charged at me. With a swift jump I landed behind her and flung my arm back to hit her back with the hilt of my sword. Her katana fell out of her arm and clattered down onto the ground. She tried to jump down to get it, and I followed, in a falling strike. We met in midair a few feet from the ground, sending my sword straight through her shoulder, then proceeding to shoot downwards towards the ground at an angle, until my sword went all the way into the ground nailing her there by her there, now both of us covered in her blood.
I pulled the sword out, letting the force of it, combined with the friction between her shoulder bones and my sword, yank her upright. She fell to her knees, barely having any energy left. I gave another slash, straight through her stomach. Blood spurted out. She tried to yell, but she didn't have the energy to do even that. A somewhat weak sound escaped her, and blood started flowing down her chin and neck. I started for her katana.
Holding it up, I turned to face her. She was a pathetic sight, pools of blood on the ground, even more blood soaking her suit. Her eyes were barely open, for the first time, a look of deep depression and hopelessness on them. Of course, I can't say I looked any better. I had almost as much blood on me as her, only none of it was my own.
"What are you going to do?" she asked, weakly.
"You know what I'm going to do, but you're just denying it. Am I correct?" I asked, starting for her. I put up my own sword.
"Please... don't..." she could barely say anything more.
I laughed softly, chillingly. I was close now, my feet were stepping in her blood.
"You know that even if I didn't do anything more to you that you would still die. What's the point in asking for mercy?" my words were still cold and dark.
I grabbed her with one hand by her throat. Holding her up, I walked over to the nearest tree and held her against it, still strangling her. I held her own katana up to her chest. My grip was loose, so she could still breathe, not that it mattered at that point. Tears were pouring down her face, mingling with the blood on her neck and my hand. With a thrust, I impaled her chest, nailing her to the tree. Her eyes widened in surprise, then closed. Closed forever.
Suzu was dead. The first part of my mission was complete. I left her there, hanging by her own blade, hanging from that tree. With a grimace, I set off again.
"Now to the past I go," I said, as I used a spell to clean the dark, drying blood off myself, and I left to finish what I started. That godforsaken deed that was my life. The darkest hour had just begun.