Chapter 5: Battle
Ruined Town of Kembos, North Ruvinagald
Zelgadis cursed under his breath after dodging another blast of the dark energy breath from the great beast. He wasn't sure if it was better to call it Yashindar or Mezulo, but either way he found it annoying. Those long tentacles moved much faster than a creature that big could normally respond. It was doing a frustratingly good job of playing keep-away with Lina, no matter how the rest of them tried to save her. Meanwhile the main body was solidly built, and largely impervious to all but the strongest spells. Even after you accounted for the fact that, as a Mazoku, it was immune to most forms of magic.
While he took a moment to breathe, trying to work out a strategy beyond simply 'attack', Zelgadis found himself smacked by a surprise tentacle sweep, smashing through the wall of a nearby building.
There were times when he begrudgingly appreciated his chimeric affliction, and the durability that stone skin gave him. Not enough to want to stay like this, though. He pulled himself back to his feet, brushing off some rubble, when Kaito's head popped into the hole in the wall that Zelgadis had made.
"I have a potentially terrible idea that I think could buy a minute or two of distracting this thing," the white-clad thief said.
"Potentially how terrible?" Zelgadis asked as he walked out of the building, glancing up at the giant monster they were battling.
"Eh... mostly dangerous for me, I think? Can you guys, like, raise the dead? I'm not sure about the limits of magic here, and I'd like to check before I try this," Kaito replied.
"Necromancy generally just gives you zombies," Zelgadis said. "It takes extremely powerful and pre-prepared magic to do anything more."
Kaito nodded. "Alright, not to self: try not to die... well, I'll give you two minutes to tell Luke Skywalker and Princess Justice over there I'm going to try to run a distraction. Then... do your best to take advantage of the time I give you."
Zelgadis nodded. He had no idea what the nickname 'Luke Skywalker' meant, but it was obviously masculine, and so no doubt referred to Gourry.
Kaito took a deep breath, hiding behind the ruins of a home for a moment. He wasn't sure if it was the risk of injury from this disguise or his inability to get the height right that bothered him more. Luckily his target audience was a giant monster, so it wouldn't notice that he was too tall for the part.
Kaito hopped up the rubble, relying on well honed parkour skills to make his way to a nearby roof. He then let his throat slip into the proper register (luckily he had some experience with a voice like this when he'd disguised as that Miyano woman... hopefully he wouldn't end up being as much of a near fatal experience as that time, though).
"Ha! You really are an idiot, Mezulo!" Kaitou shouted out in Inverse's voice, giving a sharp toothed grin as the giant beast turned his way. "You really fell for my decoy!"
"You!? But I..." Mezulo's beastly form replied, bringing forward the tentacle that held the real Lina, confirming she was still there.
The real Lina was also staring Kaito's way, confusion in her eyes.
"I suppose my clay golem is quite convincing. No surprise," Kaito said, flicking some of the red hair of his wig back dramatically, "it was made by the ever amazing Lina Inverse, after all."
"A clay golem!?" Mezulo replied, looking up at Lina. "I don't think so. That looks like a real person to me!"
"Then how do you explain me standing here?" Kaito countered, pointing a finger at the beast, holding his poker face in place as he stared up at all 15 metres of muscles, scales, fangs, and teeth. "Did you really think the beautiful sorceress who defeated the great demon Helsinki on her own and on an empty stomach could be captured so easily?"
"Helsinki?" Mezulo replied.
"You haven't even heard of Helsinki? Pheh, and I thought you might be a decent workout," Kaito said, flicking a dismissive hand and the kaiju sized demon.
"I'm not sure which of you is real now... I'll have to grab and eat both!" Mezulo roared, sending a spare tentacle flying Kaito's way.
The thief barely dodged, wobbling just slightly due to the way this disguise's shoulder pads played with his centre of gravity. More swipes from Mezulo's tentacles had Kaito scrambling up onto a higher building.
"Too slow!" he shouted, knowing that taunting that thing was beyond reckless, but also his only option.
"Stop running, you little rat!" the demon bellowed.
Kaito saw Amelia and Zelgadis flying behind the monster, carrying Gourry in their arms. They seemed like they were going to get to Lina's position soon enough, so Kaito just had to dodge a few more tentacle swings.
Only for Mezulo to slam down two tentacles, one to either side of Kaito, destroying most of the building he was on. The other side of both gashes were too far to jump.
"Well, now you're cornered, you little cockroach," Mezulo roared.
The rescue party were getting closer to the tentacle holding Lina. Unfortunately Mezulo had swung her about a fair bit while chasing Kaito.
"You're not using magic..." the monster said, blinking its many eyes.
Kaito cursed himself internally, but kept up his poker face enough to simply shrug. "I'm trying a new workout regime. More physical exercise and all that."
Mezulo charged its massive form towards him, moving like a gorilla on all fours to bring its head right up to Kaito. (And Lina so much further from rescue.)
"You can't, can you? You're a fake!" Mezulo said, horrible smelling breath flooding out of its mouth.
"You really want a Dragon Slave to the face, buddy?" Kaito hissed back, poker face barely holding together.
The monster's mouth warped into a terrifying toothy grin. "Go ahead. Give me your worst."
Kaito realised he'd not actually paid attention to Akako's conversations about the academic side of magic. He'd been busy preparing disguises and such. But, well... magic was just shouting words here, right? They'd said there was something about 'calling on spirits' or... whatever. He was copying Lina's voice. Maybe it would work?"
"FIREBALL!" he shouted, throwing his hands forward in a hopes that that might guide the spell.
Whether the gesture would have helped or not proved a moot point, as there was no magical response in the slightest. Kaito winced openly.
Luckily, he'd bought just enough time for Zelgadis and Amelia to throw Gourry at the tentacle holding Lina. The blonde's lightsaber-like blade sliced through the thick stalk of the tentacle, causing Lina to fall and the amputated portion wrapped around her to loosen.
Mezulo let out a terrifying and deafening roar of pain as Gourry caught Lina's falling form. The blonde then landed on the monster's back, turning to run down it and away from Mezulo's head.
The great beast spun around, turning to chase Gourry and Lina. And, in the process, smashing into the building Kaito was standing on with its tail. The thief waved his arms around, hoping to hold steady. The building, however, began to collapse in earnest. Glancing about, he knew the nearest buildings were too far to jump, but, also, too close for him to open his paraglider. He supposed he could try to slide down a wall, if he was—
Something had yanked him off his feet by the scruff of his shirt. Glancing up and behind him he realised it was Akako, riding her broom. Her face showed strain from the weight, but she was moving fast enough that she could drop him on the next roof over a few seconds later, not far from where Amelia and Lina were on the ground below.
"Good work, Kaito. When did you have time to make that disguise, though?" the red witch asked.
"I magician never reveals his tricks."
Akako let out a sigh. "Well, come on, they're going to need us to focus on removing that... whatever it is on Inverse's face."
Kaito was about to ask why them, when he saw the answer. Mezulo had begun blasting at the others with a dark breath weapon of some sort. Amelia had some kind of magical shield up, while Lina was struggling to pull the now crusty black substance from her face. Closer inspection revealed that those were also sitting in a magic circle, no doubt Akako's doing due to the red glow. Gourry and Zelgadis, meanwhile, were dashing about the town trying to keep the demonic kaiju from being able to focus too much on Lina's position.
Akako and Kaito made it down to the magic circle a couple minutes later, the witch setting to work doing something with the circle, while Kaito pulled out the jacket of his normal Kid uniform. He was sure he had some sort of a solvent in one of those pockets.
Lina, for her part, stopped struggling with the magical muzzle to stare at him.
"What?" he asked.
"Mmprmhm!?" she replied, gesturing at his head.
"I'm sorry?" he said, not really following.
He then felt a hand on his head, followed by a yank. The red wig and the mask slipped off then, his eyes turning to see a judgmental look from Akako.
"Oh. Riiight. It's easy to forget I'm wearing disguises sometimes, okay?"
Akako was about to say something else when Amelia's magical shield lit up under the pressure of another breath attack by the giant monster.
"Do you think you can... get Miss Lina's mouth free? I'm not sure... how long I can... hold up..." the normally bubbly Amelia asked, shaking under the assault.
Kaito scrambled, pulling out a skin safe goo remover (great for when dye packets exploded... or glitter bombs). Applying it, however, had no appreciable effect. Eye twitching a little, he switched to trying to shove some needle nosed pliers between the crust and Lina's skin. Lina winced, but he managed to chip off... barely a square centimetre.
"I can get it off, but not any time soon," Kaito said, continuing to try to chip away at it. "Can't any of you do that big Dragon Slave spell thingy against captain kaiju over there?"
"No... It's high powered Black Magic. Zelgadis specializes in Shamanic Magic... and I focus on White Magic. We know a few spells of Black Magic here and there, but... not the heavy hitter spells like Dragon Slave," Amelia said, obviously sweating.
"Don't you know Black Magic, Akako?" Kaito asked.
"Dragon Slave is a spell that calls on a specific powerful entity. You need to build a rapport with those sorts of entities before you can call upon their power," Akako replied, scribbling magic runes of some sort that Kaito assumed were reinforcing the circle they were in. (Which, he in turn assumed, was boosting Amelia's shield magic?)
"Sorcery is annoyingly complicated," Kaito muttered, still trying to free Lina's mouth. "I suppose I need to accept not knowing anything, though. I mean, I thought I could call on magic just by copying Inverse's voice..."
"You need to actually understand the spells before you can use them," Akako replied.
"Wait, though..." Amelia said, breathing out as Zelgadis managed to distract their foe with a powerful spell of some sort. "You do understand the way Dragon Slave would work, right, Miss Akako?"
The Red Witch nodded. "I could handle the mechanics off it easily, but that's not really—"
At that point Amelia stomped on her foot, getting a yelp from Akako, followed by a string of what Kaito assumed were expletives in an ancient tongue. He half braced for her to be summoning another demon to the field.
"Do that voice, and I bet the Dragon Slave would work!" Amelia said, grinning away.
Well, she smiled for a split second, until Mezulo turned back their way, preparing another breath weapon. The bubbly white mage had a shield up just in time to block, though her shield seemed to shudder worse this time.
"Fine. Yes. Gremlin voice," Akako muttered to herself, maintaining a more Lina-like tone.
"No, no. See, her magic voice was a little calmer and deeper. It's only mostly gremlin," Kaito replied, in a more accurate rendition of Lina's chanting voice.
That got a glare from both Lina and Akako, though Akako gave a small nod. The red witch then began the chant, a small orb of energy forming between her hands and her hair began to fly about in a wind that affected only her.
"Darkness beyond twilight
Crimson beyond blood that flows
Buried in the stream of time is where your power grows
I pledge myself to conquer all the foes who stand
before the mighty gift bestowed in my unworthy hand
Let the fools who stand before me be destroyed
by the power you and I possess..."
Mezulo's breath weapon halted, his many demonic eyes going wide as the magical energy around Akako grew. Kaito vaguely noticed Gourry and Zelgadis scrambling to disengage.
"DRAGON SLAVE!" Akako souted, the magic shooting out from her hands and colliding with the gut of the giant demon.
On contact the spell exploded, a flash of red exploding out, pressing against Amelia's shield and blinding them all for a moment. Akako collapsed into Kaito's arms.
When the blast subsided, and Kaito blinked the after image out of his eyes, the bulk of the town had been replaced with a massive crater. The parts outside the crater were in ruins as well, though at least still resembled buildings. Most of Mezulo was also gone, however his head, arms, and upper torso were still there. Strange dark yet glowing goop was dripping from the edge of his torso, Kaito silently thanking whoever was listening that the magical insides of this demon looked so clearly unlike a human. Amelia collapsed herself, being caught by Lina.
Kaito's heart fell when Mezulo's still hulking form moved, propping himself up on his gorilla-esque arms.
"Haha! So not even the Dragon Slave can destroy Yashindar's power!" he roared, and Kaito stared in horror as the monster's lower abdomen began to slowly re-form.
Was there really no way to stop this thing? Glancing down at Akako, he realised she was barely conscious, her hair seeming to have somehow shifted from dark red to black. He could only guess that wasn't a good sign. (Again, he really could have used some additional information about sorcery before this trip.)
Mezulo had continued laughing, a deep and thunderous laugh, only to stop with a 'huh?' noise escaping him. Looking up, Kaito saw that his body had ceased to heal, any additional energy seeming to slip away from him as glowing orbs. Kaito's eyes followed the orbs, only to spot the demon-priest Xellos sitting on top of a nearby ruined building. In the purple haired priest's hand was the Eye of Yashindar.
"What's going on?" Mezulo asked, fear creeping into his supernaturally deep voice.
"The Eye is doing its job," Xellos replied with his casual tone. "The last time Yashindar went on his rampage he proved as unkillable as a Xannaffar. Hellmaster, as his former master, was quite annoyed with Yashindar, but reasoned he could be useful in the next war with the Dragons. So he created the Eye as a storage option. Yashindar is charmed to be drawn to it. The reason summoning him needed the sacrifice of human souls was not for 'food' so much as inertia to overcome that draw back into the Eye. The damage the Dragon Slave did has drained the energy those human souls provided. Now you're being drawn back into the Eye."
Kaito glanced at Lina. She was nodding along, so he assumed that that explanation made sense.
"No! NO! I won't lose this power so easily!" Mezulo roared, lifting himself up on both arms.
Despite the limitation of only having the two limbs, he proved quite capable of moving with them. The long arms seemed decent substitutes for legs, and he began to climb over the town walls. Kaito noticed that the further the monster moved from the Eye the fewer bits of energy seemed to leak back to it, and was debating trying to grab the Eye off Xellos, when a supernaturally loud feminine voice rattled out from the hills outside the town.
"DRAGON SLAVE!"
Another beam of light shot across the sky, slamming into Mezulo's form and exploding. Kaito dove, wrapping his cape over Akako. Lina moved to similarly shield Amelia. The red flash faded a moment later, having thankfully not reached them. Kaito glanced up at the source, and spotted the distant form of what looked to be two girls on a hill outside the town. He was fairly certain one of them was Aoko, but couldn't guess at the other from here.
Turning to where Mezulo had been, there was a collection of energy orbs. Some were the same dark sickly form of the others Mezulo had been leaking. The others were... lighter? Those that he'd seen before drifted over to where Xellos sat. The others scattered down across the town, gradually coalescing into human forms.
"Would you look at that, the entire village survived," Xellos said, from his perch.
Kaito allowed himself a smile. "I always help the survival rate."
"Hrm?" Lina asked, her mouth still covered.
"Nothing, nothing," Kaito replied.
"Lady luck really does smile on you," Akako muttered.
Aoko and the shy priestess named Sylphiel (who'd just fired off one of those nuclear bomb like Dragon Slaves) hurried down towards the town. Well, what was left of the town. Between the giant monster rampage and two Dragon Slaves there was... rather a lot less of it than there had been a couple hours earlier.
"Do lots of people know that spell here?" Aoko asked Sylphiel as they slipped in the town gates.
The dark haired priestess shook her head. "I only know two other people who know it. I learned it because Lina knew it, and I wanted to prove I could be her equal. I mostly do White Magic."
Aoko gave a nod. She had no idea if that was true, but she did know that this Priestess' aesthetic was reminding her of that Xellos fellow who'd disappeared moments before Sylphiel had shown up. Both being priestly, with similar hairstyles, and... well, it was dark, so Aoko wasn't sure, but Sylphiel's hair looked purple-adjacent, at least?
Aoko also didn't have much to go on. Maybe Xellos was copying the look of less demon-y priests well, and that was why the two looked so much alike?
Speaky of the demonic priest, she and Sylphiel found him handing the Eye thingy over to Kaito. Kaito stared at the gem with trepidation that Aoko could understand.
What she understood less was why he was dressed like Inverse. The redhead, meanwhile, was having some sort of dark crusty substance chipped from her face by Zelgadis and Gourry. Akako was leaning against a stone pillar nearby, while Amelia had run off and seemed to be shouting something at a crowd of people.
Had there really been survivors?
Well, the answer to that was obviously yes, so Aoko leaned over to Akako to ask a question she didn't have an answer to.
"Why is Kaito dressed like Inverse-san?"
"He decided to be a distraction, and apparently couldn't go the whole trip without trying on a new disguise," Akako replied.
Aoko nodded. "Wait... when did he make that disguise? Those shoulder pads are complicated?"
Kaito walked over, handing the Eye to Akako, before turning to Aoko.
"A magician—"
"Never reveals his tricks," Aoko and Akako repeated in a tired unison.
"Oooh. That's a fun saying," Xellos said, drifting over to them. "Maybe I should take up some sleight of hand."
"I just want to check, was that giant monster Mr. Mezulo?" Sylphiel asked, nervously bringing a hand to her face.
"Yes, why?" Akako replied.
"Oh gosh... I blew up the man I was hired to heal..." the priestess said, pailing a little.
"Well, doing so, you saved the life of the woman who hired you, so you probably won't get in too much trouble," Kaito replied.
The priestess nodded, but still looked frightened.
"Sylphiel!?" Lina shouted, having apparently gotten whatever was stuck to her face removed.
"Hello, Lina," the priestess said.
Amelia had gotten quite caught up in providing the townsfolk with a pep talk, and had completely forgotten her plan to try to at last kiss Zelgadis in the romance of the fresh victory. Now the moment was firmly gone, and everyone was busy chatting away. The outsider group had been given the Eye of Yashindar. Sylphiel had shown up, apparently the source of a second Dragon Slave that Amelia had missed while briefly unconscious. Xellos had disappeared again. It was really all quite messy and chaotic as everyone got talking.
Lina, in particular, had a lot to say about Kaito's impression of her. It seemed most of her complaints were driven by denial about her own personality, though. He'd actually done quite a good job in Amelia's opinion.
"Lina Inverse!" a voice shouted from the ruined wall of the town. "Did you do this!?"
The group turned, and were greeted by a man with brown hair and a blue jacket. And roughly five hundred men from the Ruvinagald Law Guard behind him.
"Oh! Inspector Wizer!" Lina said, waving to him. "It's good to see you again. And, no. I didn't."
"Mhm! We only gave the Eye of Yashi-thingy to a local merchant," Gourry said. "It was that merchant who released the demon inside, which tried to destroy the town, and then needed two Dragon Slaves to defeat."
The entire rest of the group winced.
"You brought a powerful dark artifact into Ruvinagald!? And one of our nicest towns was destroyed because of it!?"
"In Lina's defense she didn't actually fire either of the Dragon Slaves," Gourry explained further. "And, besides, we were planning to steal the Eye Yishimbar back immediately, so we nearly saved the town before there was any problem."
"Gourry," Lina said.
"Yes?" the tall blonde replied
"Stop talking."
Inspector Wizer Freion's mouth twitched into a slowly growing grimace. "Is there anything else I should know?"
"Well, we do have the money to pay for the damages to Vaeril, which was the whole point of this adventure. And Mezulo was offering up a million gold for the Eye of Yashindar, so, really, someone would have given it to him sooner or later. You were lucky it was us and we stopped him before the whole town was destroyed," Lina said, walking over and handing off the two backpacks of assorted currencies and gems.
Wizer raised an eyebrow and took a peek inside the backpacks. "Well, that part does seem in order... and I had heard rumours about the price Mezulo was offering for the Eye."
"So, we're all good then, Inspector?" Lina asked, all smiles.
"Well, there is the other thing you're wanted for in Ruvinagald," Inspector Wizer replied.
"What was that again?" Lina asked, raising a finger in honest confusion.
"The crime of being Lina Inverse, of course," the Inspector replied.
Lina let out a tired sigh and buried her face in her palm.
"Being Lina Inverse is illegal here?" Kaito asked.
"... Yes?" Wizer replied. "Why do y—why are you dressed like her?"
"I was pretending to be her for part of the battle," Kaito said. "Was that illegal?"
"Hmm..." the inspector said. "Probably? We'd have to get a judge to look into it."
"Good work Bakaito," Aoko said. "You broke a law designed specifically to target one single person. Who isn't you."
"I'm just that good," Kaito replied with a grin.
"Well, I, Special Inspector Wizer Freion, will have to arrest both you and Inverse, in the name of Ruvinagald."
"Good luck catching Kaitou Kid, pal!" Kaito shouted, making a break for it and scrambling up a nearby building.
"You're not catching me either!" Lina added, taking off down a nearby town street.
"Get them!" Wizer ordered, as he and the swarm of guards charged into the city.
"How does he manage it?" Aoko muttered as the guards rushed past. "A completely different planet..."
Nerima-ku, Japan
The tall blonde lad studied the portion of the roof where Aoko had last been seen Even if it was night, and therefore the wasn't much to see. It had been nearly a week and there had been no sign of Aoko. Or Kaito. Or Akako. The latter two didn't surprise Hakuba Saguru too much, but Aoko...
Her father, Inspector Nakamori, had been hounding the kidnapping specialists of the Metropolitan Police Department the entire time. Yet, despite every police officer in Japan probably having been told to look for Aoko by now, there had been no leads. Hakuba continued to hope it was some hair brained scheme on Kaito's part. He might be a criminal, but he would never hurt Aoko. At least not physically, and even when it was emotionally it wasn't on purpose.
Hakuba also hoped that was the case because, otherwise, he had absolutely nothing to go on. Letting out a sigh, he turned to head back down from the roof. Not that he'd expected anything.
However, just as he reached the doors to the stairs down, a pillar of light appeared. The red glow held for just a minute, and then it was gone.
Nothing had changed on the roof, but... Hakuba ran downstairs. Class 3-E was just as unchanged. A floor down, class 2-E looked just as empty.
Class 1-E, the next floor down, however... well, it looked like a small renaissance fair was occuring. Staring in confusion for a moment, Hakuba's eyes eventually landed on Aoko's form. As well as Kaitou Kid? And... was that Akako? What was she... he felt his cheeks grow hot. Akako was radiant at the best of times, but in an outfit as tight and revealing as that... he found his head spinning a little.
"What's going on in here?" he asked, trying to ignore the way his heart was racing.
The entire group spun to face him.
"Xellos what are—you're not Xellos?" a short redhead said.
"They sound even more alike than Miss Lina and Miss Akako," a blue haired girl added.
"We're LARPing," Kid said... though he wasn't really doing his 'Kaitou Kid' voice. That was more just casual Kuroba Kaito. "Ahoko keeps refusing to dress up, because she's a spoilsport."
"LARPing?" Hakuba asked, his eye twitching. "And is that why you three were missing for nearly a week? And what was with that pillar of light!?"
"Hakuba," Akako's intoxicating voice said.
"Y-yes?" he replied, turning to her. His heart felt like it was in his throat, her gaze was so intense and hypnotic.
"What Kaito said makes perfect sense. Aoko left her father a note. He must have just missed it. I will talk to him," Aako said, her voice sounding almost like a choir of a dozen voices. Each sounded absolutely perfect.
"Of course, my lady," Hakuba nodded.
"Ohoho! Such a good boy... Very well, now let's go see what we can find in my library about fixing Zelgadis' condition," Akako said.
She headed off, the grey man, the short redhead, a girl with long dark hair, and the tall man with long blonde hair following her. Aoko and the short girl with blue hair left after, the other girl saying something about diplomatic relations. Hakuba's head wasn't quite clear enough to follow the conversation.
Kaito had also left at... some point? He didn't remember seeing him leave?
Beika-ku, Japan
A figure with purple hair appeared on the top of Toto Tower, a jovial smile on his face. The urban fabric of Tokyo spread out, glittering with electricity, filling the view out to the horizon in every direction. The spiritual and emotional energies of nearly 40 million humans were practically at the figure's fingertips.
"Now this does seem like an interesting place. So many mortals..." Xellos said, before his eyes opened and his smile became more ominous. "I could have fun here."