Vol 1

Ch7

Alu breathed funny, even as her insides were already healed, she still felt winded. What Verlaine had done still put a lot of strain on her body and she was seriously weak without Juubi juice at full power. Actually, that fox had said in order to get 'power' he usually relied on human emotions. As a demon, relying on emotions is what gave them their power in the first place. Alu's eyes flickered as Chuuya attempted to put her on his back.

"Don't…" she weakly said. "He'll only capture you…"

She knew of one way she could remedy this but it was a long shot and not one she thought Chuuya would consent to.

"Shut up," Chuuya said gruffly. "I'm not going to leave you," he said, glaring at Verlaine who is just standing for the moment, gazing at Chuuya, as though deep in thought.

"Chuuya-kun, you should let her go. She is a hindrance," Verlaine chided the younger boy with a sigh. "She will only make you feel sad one day."

"Then so be it!" Chuuya snapped at this nut bar. "I've only known her for a moment and she's made me feel the happiest I've ever been!" He flared, and Alu laughed softly, though it was weak. Chuuya was seriously adorable.

Chuuya made a noise of distress and yelled at Adam. "Oi! You make yourself useful. Take her and get out of here!" He said.

"But my objective is your safety, not hers," Adam said, and if there was real worry programmed there Chuuya still wanted to rip it out and step on it.

"You are really—!"

The two of them had no choice but to part as Verlaine appeared suddenly between them with no warning.

Everyone's blood ran cold.

Verlaine smirked.

"Let go, Chuuya-kun. A year from now, you'll thank me for taking you away from all of this pain…" and with that, he casually just reached over, and while his gravitational force field made Chuuya's body slam into the concrete painfully, and Adam have trouble resisting the pull to the gravel, he continued to speak. Alu's body was levitated into the air, out of reach of Chuuya.

Chuuya cried out. "Stop!" He screamed with horror.

Verlaine jumps behind Chuuya's line of sight. He also jumps behind Adam's. When he does, the weight is lifted suddenly and the two can look to see where Verlaine ended up holding Alu's body in his arms.

"I think- that humans, use the word 'isolated', much too easily."

Adam turns swiftly. He was there.

On top of the car.

He's sitting languidly on the trunk of the vehicle half buried into the wall of the building. Though his coat ripples, his expression is far more smooth. In his arms he continues to hold Alu, who is miraculously still alive. Verlaine is impressed. It really is a shame that someone so interesting had to come in only to die.

"People, know nothing about true isolation. They think that situations like, not having family, or anyone to talk to, is isolation."

Adam runs several calculations to simulate predicted situations, but each demise is devastating. If the man could ride on a vehicle he had thrown himself, there was no way for them to escape him.

"True isolation," Verlaine began, his voice singing like a solo violin, "true isolation, is a lone, soaring comet. Surrounding is only empty space. A subzero void. No possibility of being witnessed by someone, or even being able to get close to someone. Tens of thousands of years of cold silence.- Do you understand what kind of situation that is? There's no way anyone would. Other than you, Chuuya."

A small giggle erupted from Alu, though she looked half-beat. "Want me to play you a tiny violin for that shitty lament of yours?" She wheezed, smiling at Verlaine.

Verlaine stared with wide eyes.

She should be near death—if not dead by now?

He's not the only one mirroring a momentary surprised expression. Somewhere, safely tucked, in some hole, to spy and observe and record, sat a certain bandaged face young man, who had been listening to everything and as the girl spoke those biting witty words to Verlaine, the young man's lips curled into a leer.

His vapid stare for the first time, gets the faintest glimmer of light. Not bright, no, this is merely the spark of the reflection of his inner mind showing a little from the window into his darker mind.

"Chuuya…you didn't tell me you had a girl…my feelings are hurt…."

—-

A normal human would have died by now. Verlaine had made sure to crush her organs and her ribs—so why? He almost dropped her in all honesty. Actually, that wasn't a bad idea. Eyes narrowed, he just simply flew up to the roof of a taller building. Landing on the edge like a bird, he just casually pushed Alu off the edge, to watch her fall, like a marionette with its strings cut, to the ground rushing closer, below.

Chuuya's own gravity isn't strong enough to save her. He just watched, like a nightmare unfolding, as perhaps this person—this strange person— that maybe— understood him a little, crumpled with a sickening wet thud to the sidewalk below. There were screams as the last of the people in the vicinity cleared out like ants being targeted by a magnifying glass using redirected sunlight.

But Chuuya found he wasn't one of them. He felt suddenly hollowed out. Like someone had just carved him inside out. He could barely stagger to his feet as it is. Even Adam is having trouble. Chuuya attempted to stand up somehow, supporting his staggering body with his arms.

Verlaine returns to standing on top of his car embedded in the side of a building, like an actor on a stage.

"It's a shame she had to die," Verlaine lamented. "She was resilient, but even so, she is dead now, little brother. See? Anything you want will only be lost or won't last in the end. You may as well believe in something true. Believe in me, and you will be free from this pain."

"Is that all?" Chuuya's voice shook with cold unbridled anger. He glared at the murdering bastard before him, gritting his teeth tightly. This time, the body of that strange girl really wasn't moving.

"I wanted to say just one more thing." Verlaine speaks with a breezy expression. "So I'll only say it once."

Verlaine smiled gently. Then, the smell of danger disappears from his surroundings.

He says that one thing.

"Come with me, Chuuya."

Chuuya doesn't answer. Nor does Adam.

They can't move.

Verlaine's words hold no deceit or tact.

It was a genuine and transparent proposal. Or command.

"Little brother, you are a code, not a human. A soulless, simple equation. That is the true meaning of isolation. Nobody who can fill your loneliness will appear in an eternity…and if they do they will only betray you or leave you someday. But, even lone comets with no hope for relief, may fly alongside one another. If they are two comets, with the same temperature, the same isolation."

He sounded like a poet, waxing his own damn opinion. Chuuya hated this person. The animosity was all but a bubble inside of himself. He grit his teeth. He didn't know that person but he felt responsible somehow for her death. She was a perfect stranger, and yet it was the first time Chuuya felt like shedding tears for someone. No…there was still the matter of his other friends.

Paul Verlaine spoke, in a tone of a loving brother, of blood ties that are thicker than the muddy water of the world around them.

"So that's your objective." Chuuya stands up, feeling his heart beat so loud in his chest it's a roar. He is feral. He is pissed. He is one angry little ball of fire and spite. "You came all the way here, for just that?"

"No. Ever since that day, nine years ago— when I shot my friend, and stole you—-I have always dreamed of traveling with you." Verlaine closes his eyes. "Two brothers, on a trip of assassination. The only thing we are given is a meaningless life. So, let us give our creators something similar. A meaningless death. Then, we break somewhat evenly. For the good people, and the evil, all, an equal death." Verlaine speaks all the while, still closing his eyes. The voice —supposedly—didn't echo one of a transcendent assassin. All that was there—-supposedly—definitely waxed, was the sorrow of a man, his lament, and just slightly, his hope.

Chuuya snarled.

"Only during the time we do that, we can accept this meaningless life." Verlaine jumps off his car.

He extended a hand towards Chuuya.

Chuuya looked at it with emotionless eyes.

"Don't, Chuuya-san," Adam said, still pointing his gun. "If you take this man's hand, the world will become your enemy."

Chuuya was ready to smash that damn robot as well. The world was already his enemy. They'd made him an enemy by their own hands since the day he was born. That's why to feel like he had the right to a 'friend' had been so precious—brief—-fleeting— perhaps Verlaine was right on some level. Connections were painful when lost, but Chuuya's shoulders squared as he faced off the bigger man with a look.

"You stay quiet." Verlaine was not the one who spoke. It was Chuuya.

Verlaine gazed at Chuuya, looking surprised.

"I understand what you're saying." Chuuya tilted his head, staring at Verlaine with sharp eyes. "That may be true. Bonds may only lead to pain," he agreed, bitterly. But they also had led to something else. A feeling Chuuya hadn't experienced before today. A feeling he would be damned to forget so easily. People felt things for a reason. Because certain things…were meant to be treasured.

"But before I decide, answer me something."

"Anything." Verlaine smiled.

"I got a call from Pianoman earlier. He said he was going to a job he received from contact personnel. —Answer me. What did you do with them?"

Verlaine's face.

And then, slowly.

An unpleasant smile.

He leered lightly, "You don't need old friends anymore, do you?"

Verlaine hit the trunk of the car at his side. It opened, and from the inside, something rolled out. A wet sound. It was something Chuuya knew so well.

His pupils shrink.

Lippmann's corpse.

Chuuya screamed.

It was not a human scream. It was the roar of a wounded beast. An anger—and a mix of other emotions that couldn't be expressed in words.

The surrounding windows all shatter simultaneously from its impact.

And a fist was thrust forwards.

Verlaine crashed into the wall behind him. Shards of material crack and disperse. "Gha-…"

As Verlaine opened his eyes, groaning, Chuuya had already filled his view.

Chuuya's blood lust was apparent. If he had been angry about that stranger's death, he was beyond words now. His right fist slams down onto Verlaine's shoulder. Even more of the surrounding structures crumble. And even faster than the pieces can fall, the left fist. The explosive impact into his body, jams Verlaine's body into the building even further.

Fist, after fist, after fist. Consecutive hits launch nonstop alongside Chuuya's roar. Verlaine's body is now buried too far inside the building to be seen from the outside. And yet, Chuuya's fists don't stop.

"You're like a beast." Verlaine sounds bored. He will admit that Chuuya's attacks have more power than before—-but he's still so young and wet behind the ears. It's honestly a little…frustrating.

As if that voice was a cue, Chuuya's attack ceases instantly. Because it was stopped. At the palm of Verlaine's hand. And a counterattack.

If Chuuya's hits were strong, then this was the whammy.

The impact of the fist that landed in the middle of his stomach, made his clothes twist, tear, and burst. Not at his abdomen, but at his back, where the radiating shockwaves had passed through his body. Chuuya screamed in pain. But, having his fist grabbed, he can't blow backwards.

"It's good to get angry like a beast. You're forced to see what you really are, whether you like it or not." Climbing out of the wall, Verlaine landed on the ground. He let go of Chuuya's fist, and grabbed his neck.

Chuuya is hung like a sandbag.

He can't move, even if he wanted to. Incredibly dense gravity pushes onto his whole body. Spare counterattacks, he couldn't even raise his lowered arms.

"What would you know…? About 'meaningful' bonds? Bastard." Despite the pain, Chuuya's eyes were a stormy shadow.

Paul Verlaine was the stormbringer.

Chuuya was the storm.

—-

The young man with a bandage wrapped around his right eye, continues to listen to this conversation. He is silent.

It is hard to say what he is thinking.

"I see, so that's the 'yoke' suppressing you to stay human." Verlaine said in a gentle voice, still holding Chuuya. "I understand how you feel. But it's dangerous. As I said before, give up on unnecessary attachments. They will only wrap around you, until you are strangled." Having said that, he digs around in Chuuya's pockets with his free hand. Verlaine emits gravity from the tip of his finger like a detection radar, and finds it immediately. "So this is the picture that your 'friends' gave you."

Taken out, was Chuuya's childhood photograph. A kid in traditional clothing, captured by the seashore.

"I understand how you must have felt when they showed you this photograph. The trust you must have held to the group who gave it to you. I really do." Verlaine sounded almost empathetic.

Almost.

"But you will come to suffer because of that trust. Because they will tirelessly lie to you. 'You're human. Have hope. His words are nothing more than lies.' With those words, they'll keep poisoning you." His eyes were steeled. Like how Adam's eyes reflected light mechanically—it was difficult to discern who was more inhuman between the two of them.

Verlaine flicks his wrist, and throws the photograph.

It spins at high speed horizontally, stabbing Adam, who had been looking for a chance to shoot, at his shoulder. Adam grunts in pain and drops the gun he had been holding.

"Why do you think the group lies to you?" As if oblivious to Adam's movement, Verlaine keeps speaking to Chuuya. "Because your power is useful. They want to exploit that. I've experienced that as well."

Chuuya, hanged by his neck and given no opportunity to attack, retorts, almost wailing. "I don't give a fuck… I'll never forgive you...at least they all spoke some damn sense!" He has finally broken down. Whatever facade he had of keeping it together broke completely when he saw Lippmann's corpse. Just that morning, Chuuya had learned what it felt like to have more than one friend—and now, he was right back to having nobody. Completely alone. Like always. Like he had always been.

"What a troubled guy." Verlaine sighed.

"I believe the words of that girl more than yours, shithead!" Chuuya snarled.

Then, Verlaine starts chiding, as if talking to a small child, cutting up his words. "You are convinced by the words of a nobody you just met over your own brother's warning? Still so naive. So I'll show you through actions. I will cut off all the strings that bind you, one by one. Like cutting off puppet strings. And I will disentangle you. That is your fortune, and the brotherly love I can give you."

And the words were spoken frankly.

"I will assassinate every human, that intervenes with your heart."

Alu's smirk grows on her face, darkly. It was a good thing then, that she was here.

His choice of words was nothing but kind and elegant throughout. But those eyes held fire. Flames that the gates of hell would hold, burning souls to death while simultaneously freezing them- a blue-white fire.

"No." The one who opened his mouth in objection was Adam. "That's not love. According to this machine's definitions of human emotion, that is 'control desire'."

"And what's the difference between the two?" Verlaine only smiles sleekly.

"This, asshole." Alu's voice echoed as her fist connected with the side of Verlaine's fucking smarmy bastard face.

His eyes widened with shock.

Not just his own.

Chuuya's expression was an emotional dump right now.

Meanwhile, the young man in black, still nearby, put a hand over his mouth, as if to hold back a laugh. But his eyes remained unsmiling.

The numbers on the screen blip wildly.

Technology alone cannot read this person fighting Verlaine.

Adam —for a robot— also looked genuinely stunned.

Paul Verlaine's body flew back. Still, he retaliated immediately with a gravity strike aimed for Alu. Immediately, the very air around Chuuya and Adam felt heavy- but it was all focused on one point—the girl. But that wasn't the startling bit.

No what was alarming.

Was that she was holding her ground just fine. She struck Verlaine.

Chuuya was dropped immediately when Alu forcibly punched Paul Verlaine, and Adam lunged forth, to guard him immediately, grabbing the stunned boy's body and rolling out of the way of danger with him.

Verlaine found himself slammed with no warning into the grocery store wall so hard that he spewed blood from his throat from the impact to his body against the brick. This was not anti-gravity. This was not even gravity. This force was something Verlaine couldn't touch, couldn't describe, but it was terrifying. "Gah!" He cried out in actual pain. But he grit his teeth, eyes ablaze with the blue-white hell fire he was feeling.

He gripped Alu's hands now in his own, as they had an awkward wrestling match, of who would shove who into the annihilated grocery store first—lol.

"Taste the power of love, you piece of shit!" Alu yelled. She bashed her head into his, stunning Paul Verlaine. The impact caused a crater to appear under the store itself. The surrounding area shook like a mini earthquake had just hit.

Oh and people were screaming and fleeing the general vicinity,but that was par for the course.

Alu breathed hard, cracking her knuckles. She glanced at Chuuya who just sank to his knees, eyes wide, jaw agape, looking at her like she had come back from the dead. Which she technically had. Lol. "You—!" He stammered. She looked okay. She was covered in bloody clothes and looked like something out of a horror film but otherwise, she was completely fine?!

"Listen here, bastard," Alu said loudly, letting go of Paul Verlaine who looked like a limp rag doll honestly. Paul Verlaine was momentarily stunned. "There is no such thing as a meaningless existence, you hear? I'm gonna only say this once because I don't like to repeat myself to self-ego stroking morons!"

Chuuya was honestly speechless. This girl sure had a lot to say. He could barely piece together a sentence about now. Damn.

Honestly, was this girl indestructible? Chuuya just stared at her. His throat constricted. She was alive. He suddenly felt light headed. He was still furious with Verlaine and this situation. He was still reeling from the sudden shock of seeing Lippmann's body. But this person was alive…somehow in all this madness involving him, someone was alright? At least one person didn't die because of him?

Paul Verlaine roared finally, angry. "You know nothing of my plight, nor my brother's—Do not butt into things you don't have any business intruding upon!" He slammed about five gravity balls into Alu all at once. Alu cried out, and found herself slammed into the street. She tumbled through the street, pavement peeling like a potato skin from the force of the blows Verlaine distributed to her body at that moment.

"I will take you somewhere safe," Adam tries to grab Chuuya but Chuuya gives him a look. Even though his eyes are full of tears. Adam pauses.

Chuuya wiped his eyes quickly. He feels weak—overexerting Arahabaki still takes a toll and his body has been stressed to the max because of this. But, he has to push himself. He has to fight too.

Chuuya flew like a feather with the gumption of a fired rocket into space, right towards Paul Verlaine, a fire in his eyes and his soul.

Verlaine meanwhile collides once more, surprise now merely fury, as he and Alu collide head on in the middle of the battlefield looking arena they've completely created from the destruction of Verlaine's ability.

"Your ability isn't like any I've ever seen," Verlaine grunted, eyes narrowed. "But I will not lose my little brother!"

"Idiot! If you hold on too tight, you'll only lose him anyways!" Alu snapped back. "You killed his friends, you dumbass! You really think he's going to just thank you for it a year from now? Really? How thick are you?"

Verlaine increased his pressure on her. Why wouldn't she bend like before? Before she bent so easily? But somehow, the more Verlaine pressed on her, it felt like the less effective he actually was? No, this didn't make any sense!

This wasn't supposed to happen.

Chuuya let out a battle cry. The infamous one.

Chuuya socked him in the face just then. Paul Verlaine found himself flying into the cratered road, as the surrounding area shook like an avalanche was roaring down a mountainside just then.

But it was.

It was happening.

Verlaine was losing.

Verlaine wanted his little brother to understand the same isolation he felt. He wanted someone who could relate to him. This person didn't understand. She was a threat. She had to be eliminated. She had to be.

"Whoa, Chuuya, nice punch," Alu called to Chuuya.

Chuuya breathed hard but he nodded. "Don't take my prey from me!" He hotly exclaimed, needing to redeem himself and his pride as a mafioso a bit.

Alu blinked. "Oh shit, right. Sorry! I got distracted!" She sheepishly apologized.

Chuuya decided he could let it slide this one time. It wasn't like she was doing this because she thought he was weak. It was weird. It was an unspoken thing, but it felt good to have someone to kick this guy's ass with, that wasn't a complete asshole themselves. "You're seriously a weird one, you know?" He didn't know if it was a compliment or an insult. Honestly, his nature made it pretty down the middle line.

Alu just chuckled. "You're too sweet!" She tensed. "Ah, he's coming back!"

Sure enough, Paul Verlaine rose once more, seemingly just as indestructible as Alu. Tch, this would be a problem, both of them could tell. It showed on their faces, mutually in the form of disgust and irritation.

Alu could feel her body still absorbing the negativity from Paul Verlaine. She didn't want to rely on this guy's bad vibes, but it was what was fueling Juubi's inner energy bar at the moment. Boy, this guy had a lot of pent up human emotions. Alu had sensed something stirring in the back of her mind, even as she crossed non-physical blows with Verlaine in mid-air—both floating thanks to Alu's own demonic prowess and naturally Paul Verlaine's ability.

Yes. There was a reason she could counter Paul Verlaine. It was for a simple reason.

She was no longer human.

—-