Rogue Huntsman
Red
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Splinters shattered across the far wall as I kicked myself into the whitest, blandest, most toxic dorm room of the entire building, the doorknob breaking through the window across the way.
I'd already carried Ly back to her apartment on my way over here for the sole reason of making sure she wasn't left alone. And now, my eyes tracked across the room to see two sets of gazes pinned on me in the broken door frame.
"You." My voice came out dry, its hoarseness dwarfed by a calm, demanding lowness I rarely fell into.
The pompous prick who took Anoel masked her heat signature and was doing something to her Aura to keep her off the grid. I couldn't sense her. It ground into every nerve in my body that some asshole would even try this, let alone get away with it.
And when I find them?
I'm going to drop a mountain over their skull and crush whatever life they have left into dust.
"Chaotic energy that leaves little to no trace." I could already feel the tension in the air starting to quake as I tightened my fists, the walls rippling and warping around my form before I cared to calm the hell down. "Can either of you trace it?"
"I-I um…" one of the sorry voices started.
My eyes snapped to the girl who'd been pacing restlessly around the room, red irises immediately shooting away from mine as she stepped back a bit and hid behind her scarlet bangs. She was Ray's partner.
A small hint of a spark of molten, blood red lurched from her Aura.
It reeked of chaos energy.
"You're coming with me," I ordered. If she was made of it, she could track it.
The tension in my hand settled as the girl froze on the spot, her confusion turning into a slew of uncertainty. An aggravatingly slow nod dipped her head a second later, before she quietly muttered her response.
"O-Okay…"
The only other occupant in the room jumped to her feet at that. "N-Now wait a moment!"
"Not. Now," I cut back immediately, snapping my gaze to Dante's kitsune standing at my right before dragging that gaze back to Scarlet. "Grab a weapon. If you have one."
"You'll have to make due for a brief explanation then!" Inuba yelled. "You cannot simply barge in here and demand she go with you wherever you please simply because you demanded it!"
Scarlet's gaze snapped to her for a moment before she shook her head. "H-He looks angry. I don't want to keep him waiting…"
No. Fucking. Shit. This entire abduction wasn't the plan. Anoel wants to face Quinn alone. Not get abducted by some sadistic sociopath with a kink for interesting birds.
Inuba huffed. "I won't allow you to leave with him until he explains why exactly he requires your presence. Now, explain yourself briefly, Mr. Ezdeil."
"I-It's fine…" Scarlet had an assured look as she eyed Inuba, trying to get her to back down. But the girl hesitated for a moment, returning her gaze to me. "Right?"
I ignored her. Because everything damn well wasn't fine.
"I'm taking Scarlet," I said again. "I can do that. I will do that. And I'm doing it."
The wall and its door frame rattled again as I took a breath, the toxic air seizing in my lungs as I choked it down.
"Not until you explain yourself," Inuba said, stepping forward.
"Stop being so damn persistent, fox," I growled, tearing my gaze away to see Scarlet step around me and into the hall. "Somebody who I'm pretty sure is your problem just abducted my partner. And I'm getting her back. I just need someone who can actually trace the damn energy residue he left behind."
"Then…" Inuba's eyes widened before she stepped back, hesitating with her response. "Despite previous warnings, I will assist you. My sensory skills should prove useful in high accurate tracking, wherever they may be. And… should Ms. Anoel be injured in some way-"
"Fine," I snapped. We were burning time. "Just keep up."
I turned and stepped into the hall, holding in another tense breath to keep myself from eviscerating the whole damn hallway. When my gaze snapped back to the girl waiting out there, she already had her weapon strapped.
Good.
I leaned over and picked the little wiggling thing up before turning to Inuba, my annoyed scowl worsening just at the image of her.
Because the kitsune could actually fight and be irritatingly useful.
My voice came out dry again. Hard. Irrevocable. "I'm killing him when we find him. Don't bother trying to stop me."
"I… suppose I won't…" Inuba replied slowly, her hand extending to summon her katana in a burst of white flame. She tucked it into her black sash once it fell into her grasp. "Lead the way then, Mr. Ezdeil."
At least I didn't have to worry about her getting in my way. And I'll be sure to thank whatever god let her make that decision later, since she didn't seem to mind me painting the streets with that asshole's corpse.
With half an attempt to keep Scarlet's neck from snapping, I lifted her just high enough to hold her against my chest before sprinting back to the restaurant.
The air I crashed into shattered the front windows of the building as I came to a stop, a concussive, quaking wave ripping through the area as I stepped into the hole I made earlier.
Red, misty Aura was already starting to fluctuate from Scarlet as I dropped the girl onto the chair Anoel disappeared near.
Inuba moved in after me, stepping out of a little burst of white flame.
"He can teleport. But every translocation of matter leaves a trail, and your Aura's already reacting to it," I said, eyeing the red-haired girl scrambling to right herself in her new seat before I stepped toward the door behind her. "I'd tear the city up block by block, but that could take all week."
"It isn't so simple as using only an apparatus to transit themselves here and there," Inuba spoke up, lecturing me for some godforsaken reason. "The traces here are certainly of Chaotic nature, but the movement was done in a way to create no trail. However, if I attune my sensory abilities accordingly, I can find a similar trace of this Aura, wherever it may be."
Just shut up and find her.
Scarlet's finger suddenly shot out and pointed west, almost as soon as she steadily rose to her feet. "That way."
Her gaze hardened as the fluctuations in her Aura grew more volatile, staring blankly in the direction she pointed in.
Inuba followed the girl's direction with her gaze. "Yes… Precisely 87 miles to the west."
I picked the bloodhound up again and blew out the western wing of the restaurant, kicking off from the street just on the other side before letting the holes in the building repair themselves.
The old man had enough to worry about.
"We'll be there in a few seconds," I muttered into the tearing wind, a green field of my Aura shoving forward to make sure the wind wrapped around us instead of collected at our front like last time.
This was a greater distance to cover. I wasn't about to rip a trailing rift of vacuumed air down the center of Vale's central districts as we left the kingdom.
When we made it outside the city walls, I dropped it. Grimm and trees smoldered in a heated wake of long trailing plasma before I came to a hard, ground-rupturing stop in the face of an embedded mountain facility. All of it gleamed with stacked levels of white cubic structures and indented black lines.
Most of the damn infrastructure was inside the mountain's stone.
Unfortunately, it was devoid of actual life. But there was still movement inside on every level. So this guy was either blocking me out, or every damn entity in this facility was automated and he was holed up somewhere with Anoel.
"I'm going to knock. You can follow, if you want to. But this is as far as I needed you," I voiced, my eyes staying glued to the wall ahead of me as I dropped Scarlet to her feet. I moved across the clearing between me and her, reaching the reinforced facility's metal frontward wall.
My fingers ghosted over the surface for a moment, my eyes narrowing at what I felt. A subtle buzzing came from its cold, numbing surface.
Something was stopping me from sensing anything other than kinetic energy passing through the molecules.
Fine then.
If this place was built to keep me out, then I hope they thought of everything.
I slowly pushed away from the wall before stepping back, slamming my leg into the wall just once. The molecules in the facility didn't so much as budge. So I turned and kicked off back into the forest to skid to a stop just at Vale's kingdom wall.
87 miles, huh? Should be more than enough.
The ground ripped away from my feet as I pushed away from it, a crater of cracks erupting across the city's encompassing border behind me as I plowed back through the forest and crossed the distance back to the wall I touched.
If you wanted to build a facility out of kinetic dispersing materials, reinforce it with a barrier of nullification Dust and energy siphoning generators, and support it with a damn foundation of alloy beams meant to deflect Aura signatures…
You shouldn't have built it between a mountain… and me.
I sunk my fist into the wall as the air around me and my entire frame came to a screeching, bone crushing, resounding halt against the facility's wall.
Pain ripped through my arm as the bones inside it fractured and broke as quickly as I put it all back together. But the warping wall caved in for a split second before shattering inward in a spanning, collapsing hole that all but took off the entire northward face of the nine-story building.
Bullets immediately ripped into my body in a hail from inside before I could put a shield up. Blood streamed down my healing arm as my eyes scanned the broken levels in front of me, several rounds slipping by as I looked past humanoid androids and automated turrets.
343 rooms. From what I felt breaking my arm against that wall, at least.
I only needed to find one.
My gaze fell back into the streams of bullets assailing me. Dark, metallic figures flashed in blinks of muzzle fire, vizors locked on nothing but me in the open-aired, gaping hole still collapsing in on itself. These weren't the same model of Atlesian Knight Atlas corned recently on the open market. They were more advanced, and made of the same material of the facility's walls.
Just a lighter alloy shell surrounding a heavy internal skeleton. Which meant they were durable. Fast. Highly deadly. And programmed to overwhelm through sheer power and strength, capable of shrugging of direct shots from explosive rounds if they had to.
So I dismantled the nearest one and ripped out its metal skeleton, breaking it piece by piece to jam the sharp piercing ends of it into the visors of the three robots dashing toward me with drawn, Aura-nullifying blades.
"Scarlet!" a shrill voice yelled out from behind me.
I finally put that barrier up as Inuba dropped down to her knees in a rush, the bullets scurrying past me coming to a screeching crawl as I glanced back to follow them.
The red-clad girl I brought here was on the ground, hands clutching at her bleeding stomach and torso. A stream of blood slowly trickled down from her head.
It was just problem after problem. But her Aura was only running more and more rampant.
Inuba's glowing hands pulled away from the bleeding girl as streams of red melted from Scarlet's skin. Faded, crystalline mist scattered into the dust-kicked dirt around her as her body twitched slightly.
The crumpled, smoking gleam of a bullet pushed its way out of her forehead as the girl sat up, her shoulders starting to rise and fall heavily with her rampant breathing.
She was trying to rein her energy back in.
Why?
"This isn't the place to hold back," I growled, the concussive, metallic ring of bullets slamming against my Aura shield behind me filling the air. "Just don't kill my partner."
The panting girl shifted her weight to her feet as she moved to a crouched position, breathing only getting heavier as she stood. Red mist poured from her skin now, draining into the ground and scattering over the grass and dirt like a red-tinted, streamlined sandstorm.
Her hands trembled at the epicenter of that billowing field, twitching uncontrollably as her right arm fell to the collapsed hilt of her weapon.
The girl's crimson eyes began glowing as I watched her irises tear a streak of raging red through the air, molten lines of piercing ruby plasma shooting around inside her volatile outpour of energy. She was carrying a red, chaotic thunderstorm in that plume of Aura.
Her fingers curled around her weapon and tightened, knuckles whitening as she unclipped it from the belt around her waist.
"Remove the barrier," she murmured. Her words came out harsh and aggressive as she struggled to contain the anger swelling inside her.
Vermillion energy pulsated around her form with every beat of her heart. Its slow, wisping form starting to manifest in a restrained, protective cloud around her in preparation of the incoming hail.
It was toxic, violent, and devastating. Enough to tear the flesh from a man's bones in an instant.
She was a walking timebomb about to explode.
But I dropped the barrier anyway.
Before the bullets already hounding into it could whistle by, Scarlet kicked off and streaked into the building with an explosion of red.
"As for you," I said, pointing my gaze back to Inuba as the gunfire trained from me to the rampaging girl inside. "If Anoel's hurt, fix her. For now, help me find her inside."
Inuba nodded. "I understand."
The interior walls may have been weaker than the exterior shell of the building, but they still blocked out my senses. Whoever this guy was, he built an entire building specifically designed to lock me out.
That was only pissing me off even more.
"I'll take us to the fifth floor to give Scarlet some breathing room," I called out, stepping back into the building before dipping forward and shoving off down the hall.
We passed a whirling, red tornado of enraged death sweeping through the room inside. And I could already feel the energy radiating from her.
If the walls were this strong… then the androids in my way wouldn't be able to hold up against them. So when I kneed a robot into the nearest wall after it sank its coated sword into my arm, I followed it through by grabbing its head and crushing its skull into a metal supporting column as we ran.
White fire immediately surged past me and encompassed the rest of the androids in our way, a cone of wind piercing the middle of the inferno to paint the hallway with warped, glowing metal.
"I see the stories they speak of your aptitude for destruction are very accurate…" Inuba spoke up.
"Funny, I thought I was most known for my alcohol," I returned, ripping the supporting beam from inside the wall and spearing it through a cluster of androids circling the corner. I took that kabob and swung it like a bat, ripping it through an entire interior wall to crush a line of androids into the oncoming adjacent wall. "The stairs are around that bend, central hallway. We'll need to cross two intersections to get there."
"I can feel the Aura Signature of the individual we're tracking…" Great. She could sense him and I couldn't. "It's… No… Can it be…?"
"Save the revelations of this guy being special for later," I let the beam I used sink into the wall as we rounded the corner, my arm immediately throwing up a shield as we pushed through a line of gunfire.
"You don't understand, this individual's Aura Signature almost matches theirs!" Inuba called out behind me.
Oh.
Four wasn't already fucking enough?
Fantastic.
The walls hadn't stopped pounding since the first quake seismically shook the entire compound.
So Anoel knew Niro must've found them, but she also knew that was exactly what this guy wanted. He was using her as bait. It was plain as day.
And the table she laid across only felt harder the more time seemed to pass, aching limbs refusing to move despite her every effort to try to twitch them every once in a while.
She was already wounded from her fight with Quinn, it wasn't like she could fight back. But her wings were sprawled out across the surface at her sides, draped and bent awkwardly and further than what looked comfortable for her.
They hurt too much to move right now.
Surprisingly enough, it wasn't the asshole who took her here that did this to her. It wasn't him that broke some segments of her wings in trying to map out the internal structure of her body.
It wasn't him that left her in a sore, curled up mess on a table with numbed and cold skin chilling her to her core.
No. He didn't so much as touch her since he brought her here, but here she was just left to silently bristle in lingering pain from what they said was research but she was pretty sure fell under the category of curious torture.
And he had the audacity to look displeased about her current condition too, on top of all that.
The heels Ly bought her were long since removed, but she was glad they kept her dress on. But they could've cared just a little more about it… instead of disheveling it and ripping it in a few places. Small streams of blood still trickled from her shivering, porcelain skin just beneath some of those tears.
Her worn dress held a stark contrast to the rest of the white room, its ruined black silk and tangerine gems glinting in the channeling light of the walls as she narrowed her gaze at him.
The room's walls weren't exactly flat, either. Its architecture had cube-like blocks sticking out of various areas, but the main patterns adorning the entirety of the large room had circuit-like patterns that glowed with black energy. Energy that matched the same ebony black of her dress. And each line traveled across the various pathways to scatter throughout the walls and floor of the room around her.
"I did plead to leave you untouched. But of course, young Maestro must have it his way," his voice spoke.
Anoel's eyes narrowed a little more as she finally turned her gaze away, resting the side of her head heavily back against her uncomfortable 'bed'.
"A-And yet… you s-still did nothing," Anoel all but spat, her voice a little hoarse as she tried to bend her sore legs up.
She wasn't even tied down, and she couldn't move.
"My options are quite limited given who I'm working for. If I'm working with someone such as Sylvius Maestro for half a year like I have, I must at least give the impression I actually work with him."
Half a year, huh? "Is t-that how long it's taken you to abduct a single person?" Anoel asked, sorely moving her arm up to rest her hand in front of her as she managed to only just curl up on her side.
"Well, in a sense, yes and no," her 'waiter' replied. "You see, in regards to young Sylvius, half a year of a carefully planned approach was what was needed. If I may be honest, you are but one half of the entire whole."
Anoel lightly growled as she tried to bend her legs up now too, only succeeding in getting the aching limbs just partially bent into a more comfortable position over her flattened wing. "Just to draw Niro in? You realize he's going to level this entire compound… right?"
"This is but one of many. It matters not to me. I constructed this compound to study you briefly and contain your mad dog as long as possible before he inevitably breaks out. My purpose was simply to keep both of you here to give young Maestro his opportunity to act on his actual desired goal."
This was only a distraction? For what? Anoel's eyes narrowed into slits as she stared blankly at the wall away from him, body going limp now that she'd found a position to lie in.
They were after something else… he was after someone else. But, who?
Ano's eyes slowly started to widen as she strained her neck a little, pointing a glare over her slender shoulder to meet his face again. "This bullshit better leave my sister out of it."
The man lifted a hand to dissuade her. "He has no interest in the younger phoenix. Not yet anyway. Though, I would stand to reason she would be something akin of a pest to him should she decide to stand in his way."
"Then who the hell is he after? He can't be after-" Anoel cut herself off as her eyes widened further, her gaze narrowing a few seconds after to try to pierce a hole through his eye sockets with her vision alone. "Lightning… that bastard uses lightning…"
Kitsuki was deathly afraid of lightning. It petrified her. But Anoel couldn't ever figure out why because the girl buried it so far behind so many walls that it was impossible to peer into that kind of past.
Now she knew.
"Yes… You're starting to understand what this is all about. I can see it well within your eyes."
Anoel grumbled to herself as she rolled back over, resting her head heavily against the table as she tightened her loosely clasped hand resting on the table's surface in front of her.
If Sylvius' plan was to take Kit, Arex wasn't going to just step out of his way and let him have her. She was too attached now.
Even if he took her in front of Arex's eyes, she'd still go after him.
That was one of the painful parts about knowing how devoted Arex gets.
"I need to get out of here…" Anoel murmured. Arex was going to chase after him and get herself hurt.
"You needn't worry about your sister. Young Dante is currently with her. Her safety is entirely guaranteed," he assured, laying a hand on the table.
"And you expect me to believe that?" Anoel muttered back.
"I expect you to believe in his ability. I know you've peeked into the dark corners of his mind. But you've only scratched the surface really. You've yet to truly know and understand the sort of person young Dante is, and what lengths he will actually go to in order to protect what he wants. So… in that regard, you can take my word for it that your sister's safety is guaranteed."
This was her sister he was talking about. He didn't know a damn thing about what she'd throw herself in the way of to reach out for someone else. Even her.
And it definitely sounded like this guy knew an awful lot about everyone involved. Just how long were these people watching them?
How obsessed could they be to just observe their moves and actions for this damn long?
Anoel held her breath as she closed her eyes, letting her hand loosen before falling open against the table. "Just… get the hell away from me. You've done enough."
"Not quite. There are still two more things I've yet to accomplish before the mad dog arrives soon." His hand moved from the table to her forehead, two fingers lightly touching her skin at its center. "Please, take a deep breath."
Anoel was a bit short of that, so she didn't bother.
"This is in order to help you my dear, not harm you."
Even if that was true… "Deep breaths aren't exactly in my capabilities right now, Valar."
"As I just discovered for myself currently…" he spoke back, his brow furrowing as he focused on his touch against her head. "Very well then. Be forewarned this will hurt somewhat. After all, I am at the very least healing your fractures. Think of it as the beginning of a lengthy apology. After all, I did mention I don't particularly enjoy these kinds of assignments."
Anoel tensed her jaw as she kept her eyes closed, the rest of her sore body lacking the ability to tense up too. "Doesn't feel like much of a sincere apology."
"As I said, it's but the start. I would do more, but the mad dog approaches quickly."
Stop calling him that, Ano growled in her head.
"My apologies. It's but a term I am used to in quick reference to mr. Ezdeil."
"He's not some sort of depraved dog, so stop using it."
"Of course."
Anoel ground her teeth together for a moment before taking a short breath, feeling the pressure of her lungs try to force it back out of her as soon as she did. "Just get it over with, then."
So…
The prick who took Anoel had the same energy signature as Dante.
And the rest of his damn family.
"Why the hell are your bullshit problems becoming mine?" I growled loudly, burying an android into the metal doors in front of us before stepping forward and kicking it straight through the massive entryway.
An enormous white room opened up, torn open by breaching doors as that single bot's destroyed body slid into the middle of a small army of androids waiting inside the overly large chamber.
Black energy angrily pulsed through the conduits of the chamber's ground, rushing up the uneven white walls of the area I just broke into.
The entire room was a joke, the flat floor giving way to the jaggedly cubed walls while the rest of it channeled with surging black lines.
It looked the exact same as the rest of the facility.
"It's not necessarily 'our' problem, mr. Ezdeil…" Inuba voiced back. "I merely described the nature of his Aura more accurately to inform you. He… will pose an adequate challenge."
"I don't care if he poses a challenge or not," I shot back, crushing my forearm into the doorframe as we passed through to collapse the hallway behind us. "This guy's related to Dante and he took my partner."
She turned her gaze to me as an armada of sprinting androids got crushed beneath the collapsing debris. "While the type is a sort of match, it doesn't mean entirely they're related. He could simply possess a duality type nature of the same category as theirs."
"He has the same god damned energy as your immortal leader," I growled, bullets starting to tear through me as I glared at the array of moving machinery and armed androids littering the room. "Probably from the same damn source too."
I didn't even care to throw up a barrier. This constant hail of projectiles was getting annoying to deal with. And this entire place was one vulnerable body away from being nuked.
Thundering echoes of crashing metal sounded from the room through the nearest wall, but the piercing movement of hydraulic arms and a much larger automated droid filtered into the gunfire of the room from its center.
"Oh, fun," I stated darkly, crushing my hands together as the activation of a slowly rising multi-modular walking tank began to show itself. "Another toy to fodderize."
Before the colossal thing could move, the wall to the right of it warped inward and shattered from its outwardly caving center.
A twin tank-droid just as big as it slid through in a heap of smoking metal and dented armor as its interior melted onto the white floor of the chamber.
Scarlet's small steps ghosted into the room from the new entry point. Her ruby gaze trailed in a streaking red light, a malicious gleam nestled so deeply in her eyes the entire room started to quake as she twitched.
The small lithe girl was angry, buzzing with energy as it flowed like an endless channel through her limbs and hair. She was still just as pissed off as she was the moment she got shot in the head.
"Only a coward hides behind robots… crying and shaking like an infant," Scarlet growled as the ground deteriorated beneath her feet. "Was this supposed to be a challenge? This is an insult!"
Energy collected in her arm, flowing down to the weapon she grasped in her right hand, its blade illuminating with an angry vermillion glow.
"Give me a fight!"
I watched as her words were met with a pistoning leg from the fresh tank standing over her, slamming down with its full body weight and more, only for her to crush the attempt with a thrusted hand.
Inuba's hair fluttered as I glanced to the side, the kitsune's frame already stepped forward and jutting her hand out at the machine.
"Kitsune Art #33… FoxFire Burst!" A large, condensed column of white flame rapidly connected between armored machine and her with a cry from her throat. The piercing burst melting a large, gaping hole into it and knocking it down.
Scarlet's weapon surged immediately after, volatile red energy erupting from its blades before drilling through the machine the moment she touched it. And when it did, everything that held the droid together weakened instantly as crimson plasma shot through its chassis.
The girl looked utterly disappointed.
She had a right to be.
"Move," I growled from above, the ground where I stood earlier completely caved in from my leap as I drove my fist into the machine's cracking and smoldering body.
The air broke as its armored body shattered, shrapnel exploding into the room in a destructive cone of debris that lodged itself into anything remotely solid.
Everything in the room dropped to the floor as I landed heavily in the smoldering rubble of wires and panels, a decimation of androids clattering to the floor as the last bit of shrapnel ripped through the visor of the last one standing.
My hard eyes turned to Inuba, Scarlet already breaking her way into the next room as gunfire erupted from the other side. "How many more floors?"
"We're currently on the same floor he is. We've but a few more meters ahead of us," Inuba stated.
Arex's hands were still shaking as she fiddled with her scroll. Anoel wasn't responding again… and she couldn't even get in contact with Niro.
It almost seemed like they were off the grid, and GHOST couldn't even get a trace on either of their locations.
Which… really didn't sit well with Arex right now.
"Ciel, Leo, whatever you're up to, time to drop it," Dante stated as he hurriedly walked down the halls with the phoenix, HoloScroll in a call in front of him.
"What's the rush big brother? TV show to watch?" a female voice spoke back.
"Nope. Code 4A," he simply stated.
Her voice meter spiked. "Woah, you serious?! Who got nabbed?!"
"Kitsuki," Dante answered. "I'll explain more when I get to the dorm. Are Musashi and Bailey with you?"
"Yes, we're currently present," another female voice sounded from the call.
Dante nodded, and Arex was only feeling worse. He was contacting… a lot of people. "Good. Grab Nori and Kaliel, and see if RWBY's got free time on their hands. We're gonna need a few hands on deck for this one."
"Roger roger," was the last thing Ciel said as the call ended, and Dante swiped away his holographic screen.
"Hey, still tingly from that guy's lightning?" the immortal asked, nudging Arex slightly.
That tiny nudge drew a flinch out of Arex, and she couldn't help but shrink her shoulders in as they walked. "More from the other thing."
"Don't worry, we'll get her back." His presence seemed to step away, and she was a little relieved from the space he gave her. "And I'm for sure going to be taking that bastard's hand when I get my hands on him. You can take the other if you want."
"I only want Kit back…" the phoenix muttered under her breath. She didn't care how they did it, just as long as she got her back.
Dante's voice paused as they took a few steps in silence, and Arex just huddled down into herself a little more, taking a tight hold of her arm. Then he sounded reassuring again. "Like I said, don't worry all too much. From what I gathered, that guy won't do anything really. He's just a seriously obsessive freak…"
"I-It's not what he might do," Arex replied back. Her voice quivered as much as her fingers did, scroll almost slipping from her grasp as she let her arm curl in toward her body. "It's what he already did to her."
That look on Kit's face when he grabbed her… it was still ingrained in Arex's mind. It was a stare of terror and petrification, like her worst fear was suddenly coming to life and she was helpless to stop it.
He'd done a lot more than just take her…
"That kind of look definitely had some background context between those two," Dante responded. "If I had to take a guess, all of this wasn't happening within the recent period of time. She knew who he was. And she definitely didn't look all too surprised he was there. It was like she was expecting it."
"Dreading it. It looked like she was dreading it eventually happening." Arex's voice fell again as they turned the corner, her eyes dragging over the floor as her numb legs somehow kept carrying her forward. "You don't know this about her… but Kit hid herself in a closet the last time Beacon had a thunderstorm. She's terrified of the flashes of light."
And now Arex knew why.
"I… sorta knew that already," Dante admitted, and Arex's gaze slowly drew back up to him. "See, I started investigating a few weeks ago about her partner's death. It was just too suspicious for me. I tried to get a lead normally but found nothing. The guy that took her was so meticulous with his methods he made everything untraceable. Except, he didn't account for what I can 'see'."
He… looked into that? Official records said it was Grimm that killed the student, not some sort of planned murder.
"Elisia pointed out a beowolf that had weird burn marks on it. So we went to the Emerald Forest and hunted it down. When I got to it, I peeked into its memories and saw what went down. Those cameras in the area that went down?" he said, pointing up a bit. "The beowolf was about to pounce them when it saw lightning jump out of the cameras to paralyze Kitsuki and her partner, which made both of them easy prey for the beowolves."
He managed to see that? All Arex was told before she transferred in was that Kit's previous partner died during initiation, and that Anoel was probably going to look into the matter.
And knowing her own sister, there wasn't any real 'probably' in that equation at all. She was going to look into it. But, none of it really came up. Which usually meant Anoel found her answer. And… that also meant she didn't want to share it.
"Wolvies got her partner, and nicked Kitsuki when she was able to make a run for it. Never saw a face," Dante said. "But when I saw that douchebag use lightning, I knew then and there that was the guy I was looking for."
This would all explain why Kit can get so tense sometimes, moments Arex always just pegged to poor social interaction. And… it also gave a harsh reason why Kit's first instincts were always to lock herself away and disappear.
She was running from him.
"Did you get a hold of your sister?" Dante asked.
"No…" Arex shook her head, finally bringing her gaze away from her treading feet to glimpse the dormitory doors as they walked. "And that scares me too, because GHOST can't track her this time. Her signal doesn't exist."
"What? Is that true Ghost?" he asked with concern in his tone.
"Unfortunately, it is," GHOST's voice replied, tone slipping out of the speakers of Arex's clasped scroll. "I've been monitoring for her signal and boosting scroll towers to find last known locations. If Niro's with her, his signal cut off 87 miles from the western wall of Vale."
Dante let out a stifled chuckle as he shook his head. "That bastard… Now I want to kill him even more…"
"K-Kill who?" Arex asked.
"Not your leader. Unless he tries to pick a fight at any other later date. Except Tuesday," Dante said with a shrug. "No, the guy that took Kitsuki got the jump on us in more than two ways… Guess who isn't here to blow him out of the water?"
"The most effective way to take Niro out of the equation is to take Anoel out of it," GHOST cut in again. "Guy probably thinks it's smart. He's not thinking of the backlash."
"Not currently, no," Dante replied. "As long as Niro isn't present, he doesn't have to worry so much. Bad luck for him either way, because I'm pretty sure he didn't account for me and everyone else that would help… If I didn't know any better, I'd say he's looking down on us."
"Or keeping those plans out of your knowledge," GHOST said.
Dante shook his head. "Either way… he practically stabbed the devil in the back and thinks he can get away with it. Wait till he sees a pissed off phoenix kick his ass to Sunday."
Arex grimaced at that. "We have to find him first…"
"The Maestro Manor isn't far from the upper districts," GHOST informed, but her voice took a harsh dip in tone as the light filtering through Arex's scroll flickered. "It's surrounded by an electrical deadzone, though. I can't get in."
"Damn… That's fine, then. Thank you for trying at least," Dante said as he and Arex turned the next corner to their dorm rooms. "Hopefully Ciel gathered everyone up. Because we need a short talk before we go diving into the lion's mouth."
Just as long as there was enough of them… Arex didn't want to think about what they'd probably have to push through to get to Kit, or even if the others would be willing to help on a notice like this.
Even if they couldn't risk that, Arex already knew she was going either way. With or without everyone around her.
It was just… She didn't stand a chance on her own.
The door unlocked when Dante stepped up, and with a press of the hand he opened it shortly after to peek inside.
Arex was starting to envy how he could be so calm. She was struggling to even articulate words let alone stop her fingers from shaking.
"Looks like the gang's all here," Dante said with a chuckle.
The phoenix took a deep breath, but stayed in the hallway instead of go immediately inside. She was a mess. How was someone like her… even supposed to be convincing enough to get a few more to help?
As soon as the doors warped beneath my kick, I flooded the immediate room just inside with an electrical burst of green energy.
The entire chamber of white blocks surged with it by the time the metal doors unhinged and bulleted into the room, embedding themselves into the far wall in a crash of whatever metal this place was made of.
There… Anoel's frame was limp on a white, cube-like table in the center of the room. That was the only obstacle in this entire facility that mattered.
The rest of it could just goddamn crumble to the ground for all I care.
As soon as I laid eyes on her, the energy I flooded into the room collapsed into a spherical barrier around her and hardened, condensing under the closing fingers of my glove.
"So, you're the one who took her," I growled. The dressy figure standing leanly between two destroyed, crumpled doors was my only target now.
And he even dressed to the occasion. How formal. That explained why he was able to steal Anoel away, though. He looked like a high-paid waiter.
"Indeed I was. My apologies," he said with a bow, black-gloved hands gesturing in a polite manner. Wonderful. I'd rather he not informally accept his immediate death. "I was unfortunately tasked with keeping her here. And in that regard… you as well."
"Then why don't you just off yourself then if you feel so bad," I cut back, slamming my arm into the framework of the wall beside me as soon as Inuba stepped into the room.
The metal hallway behind us collapsed, alongside the entirety of the surrounding facility floor-level and its scattered rooms.
"Self-termination isn't an option I'm afraid," he spoke, smiling as he pulled the black gloves on his hand tight. "Nor will it ever be. My goal is to survive and document all that I see and experience. I intend to keep doing so, even with you currently-"
He brought up a wall between himself and the crushing leg I was driving into his side, cushioning the blow just enough for him to leap out of my way.
Fragments of his defense ripped into the wall behind him in a shattered cone. Shame none of that hit him.
"Now now, no need to be hasty. Allow the young miss behind you to carry off your dear friend first. Getting caught in the backblast would be disastrous, wouldn't you agree?" He looked past me to Inuba, through the shell of the barrier I collapsed around my partner.
The kitsune glanced at him, looking confused before she took a step forward. I let her into the barrier, and she appeared next to where Anoel lay in a burst of white flame, disappearing in that same burst not long after with the phoenix in her arms.
"I will care for her," Inuba spoke against the thunderous crashing that sounded throughout the facility walls.
"Heal her," I spoke back, the barrier left in the center of the room collapsing in on itself before shattering to trickle back into my glove. "As for you, I'm surprised you stuck around."
My own glove flexed as it surged with the energy coming back to it, sparks of lime green erupting between my fingers as I reached out and touched the white, cubed-over wall beside me.
This guy had domain over the matter this facility was built from.
Energy drained into the walls of the room at the same time the energy hidden inside it bit me back, a numbing pain sweeping into my hand before I threaded mine to weave with Valar's own inside this sector of the building.
Corroding into the control he held over the matter in here.
"You seem to know me," I said, drawing my hand away and back to my side. The thundering crashes dully echoing through the walls still getting closer.
"Indeed," he replied with a sickeningly polite smile. "I know a great deal about you. Which is why wrestling control from me won't work. My chances of defeating you are fairly low as it is, but there still is that chance of success. I will happily work with what I have."
He tapped the floor with his dress shoe, and the matter beneath my feet tried to erupt upward.
He was trying to throw me. I lowered to my knee and slammed my fist through it, shattering through the rising matter before pushing myself out of the way of two collapsing pillars shooting out of the walls.
His control was still in them, but my energy made it all the easier to destroy.
That's what it was good at, anyway.
"You had the chance to leave," I replied, my gaze staring through the lip of my hat as I reached up and stopped a bulleted horizontal column of white matter ripping out of the wall.
I took that and broke it away, ripping it out of the wall to fire it toward where he stood on the other side of the room.
He moved his head out of the way, positioning his hand in front of the chunk drilling toward his chest. The block of matter ground to a stop in the air as it elongated into a lance, his next rising gesture twisting the projectile in its place before shooting it forward with blinding speed.
My hat immediately lifted just as I bashed the tip of it to the side with my forearm, leaping forward just as it drove into the wall beside me.
Another was already hurdling out of the area just behind him, closing the distance faster than the first.
I couldn't deflect it this time, so Aura surged through my glove as I closed my fist around green energy and drove a punch into the razor tip of the spear. Energy shot down the length of the javelin and shattered it from the inside out, the matter acting as a conduit to cannon a piercing line of energy straight back at him.
The matter beneath him lifted him out of the path of the piercing energy, an air-shattering hole ripping through most of the wall where he previously stood.
I needed to remove him from this place.
My hand fell back to the ground as I pushed forward, his own hand falling with a quick downward swipe, and a raining hail of shining lances shot down from the ceiling.
I immediately deflected the first into the floor, but the spear of black-traced white erupted in a dark-energy explosion. It carried a field of the same numbing energy this guy had stuffed into the walls. And from the cold taste of it, it was undoubtedly his Aura I was choking on.
The second javelin ripped into my arm and jammed into the ground, nailing me to the floor as another found its way through my shoulder to lock me down further.
Then they both erupted.
Fine then.
A field of swirling green energy erupted out of the ground as I slammed my glove into the floor, lines of light surging upward to drive the rest of the raining projectiles down into the area around me as the holes through my body slowly closed.
"How very interesting… Your method of healing is unique, but subpar in comparison to your friend," Valar spoke.
"It's not healing," I growled, closing my hand into a fist before I lifted it from the floor and sunk it back into the white ground.
"My apologies, would reconstruction be a term more suitable for you?" his voice asked.
"No." A rippling wave ripped into the ground as I stuffed it full of a tidal wave of Aura, a trembling shake of the ground overtaking the entire facility as I blew out the foundation of the building beneath us.
The mountain was next.
I yanked my hand out of the poisonous ground and stood back up, white matter crumbling out of the walls as the floor violently rumbled.
I don't know if it was the numbing byproduct of his Aura or my lack of care, but the temperature of this room was steadily rising as well. And I hardly noticed.
But something caught my senses from the hallway I collapsed when I got in here.
Metal screeched and tore from the side, the left wall slowly starting to glow red hot, before its entire structure weakened and warped, exploding outward into the room.
Oh. Great. She ran out of chew toys.
Red, plasmatic energy recollected toward its source as Scarlet hopped out of the tunnel in the wall she drilled through, glowing molten metal leading all the way through its wide interior.
And she was brimming with the energy she ripped from the matter around her, complete and total transmogrification into pure, unmitigated antimatter.
She was turning into a walking timebomb on a nuclear scale.
"Five thousand robots…" the girl uttered lowly. Slow, calm breathing rhythmically causing her shoulders to rise and fall.
The girl soon let her illuminated eyes lock onto the well-dressed man in the air.
"Five thousand and one."
I immediately took her and threw her at him.
An eruption of red plasma flooded into my body, disintegrating the majority of the area around me in the fraction of a second it took to grab and release her. And every bit of it sunk into my bones beneath my seared skin.
Her weapon snapped to her hand before she collided with him, bringing its heavy blades down to connect with his body. I growled under the pressure of her energy and sunk down onto a knee, watching him side-step her to let her pass him. She drove her feet into the ceiling just as she did before kicking off and landing on the other side.
I clutched my arm, skin violently trying to repair the damage her Aura caused. The girl's lingering energy wasn't going away…
"Too predictable my dear," that damn voice spoke out.
"Says the textbook villain hiding behind his subpar automatons who are about as useless as a waterproof tea bag," Scarlet countered calmly. "You're in no position to patronize me when you're as generic as a loaf of bread."
Her red energy felt like it was festering as it boiled inside my body, the ground starting to disappear beneath my knee as I tried to absorb it.
"Oh but I am. You see, you don't interest me all too much. I already know a great deal about-"
"I don't care." The blades on Scarlet's weapon folded back as a barrel protruded from the front. The girl then swung it down and to the side, keeping it there in a defensive position, only to collide with my glove as I grabbed her wrist with my bare hand.
Her suddenly alarmed gaze snapped to me as the room saturated into an overwhelming red as scarlet energy diverted from her and into me, the entire room eroding away in seconds as the matter of the ground and everything it attached to fell apart.
Scorched particles flooded into the air as the facility collapsed, my boots cratering into the base of the mountain's foundation beneath the dwindling building as I ripped out every last morsel of stored up energy Scarlet had churning inside her.
The fight in her eyes immediately vanished, and I caught her before she could fall limp to the ground in exhaustion.
"Hey, Inuba!" I yelled, taking Scarlet up into a tighter hold before spinning and throwing her through the open air of the fading facility.
The white kitsune was camped out in the forest with Anoel's injured frame, but she managed to softly catch Scarlet with a small skidding of her heels, her tail bristling from the lingering energy on Scarlet's skin.
"Keep them safe! Or I'll kill you too!" I called out, taking a stumbled step to right myself into a standing position.
Everything was red. And that molten, scarlet energy flooding my vision erupted in my eyes as it tried to eat through every fiber of my body, twitching through my fingers and arms as the mountain around us started to erode into the air.
Just like the facility.
"Careful now mr. Ezdeil. If young Dante heard you saying that, he'd very much take your head before you even realized it," he warned.
"In what world would I even remotely care about dying?" I growled back, biting through a painful surge of plasma trying to eat into my throat and lungs.
When my gaze finally turned up, he was still floating pretty on his slab of matter.
"Besides," I grumbled, my voice coming out in a strained bite of pain. "if she can't tank this, then she's disappointing both of us."
And by this… I meant the nuclear detonation of a mountain.
I flooded my bones with reinforcing Aura as plasma started ripping out of my skin in uncontained streaks of light, embedding melting streams of red into the ground as I took a slow step.
The ground was quick to crater away as soon as I touched it, but my attention wasn't on that.
My target was lifting his arms and reforming the fading matter around him into a multi-barrier shell.
Shielding this wasn't going to be that easy…
The air between my position on the ground and his thickening barriers burned into a bleary line of molten plasma and erupting antimatter, the shell he built up cracking for a moment as I drove a fist into it before completely shattering.
Superheated air quaked under the rising temperatures as the rest of those barriers broke away, the line of light finally connecting between his final position and my leap.
Before the plasma breaking into the ground could even realize I was gone, I grabbed the slow-moving form of him hiding in his cocoon and drove him by the neck back into the base of the mountain below.
Everything beneath us caved away as I pushed off the crumbling bedrock and brought us both into the heart of the mountain, stone melting away as the energy inside my body started breaking out of its containment.
By the time we reached the core of the entire tectonic mass of bedrock and stone, the energy inside me trailed out and arced into the earth encompassing our tomb.
Then that pure red sunk into the heated underground air and detonated, the heart of the explosion ripping out of my body and evaporating the mountain from the inside out in a blinding concussive blast.
Sunlight fell as soon as the mountain was cleared, shining over the crater I caused as the remnants of his body fell with me toward the desolated, scorched rock beneath us.
He was strong enough to survive the blast point-blank.
For the most part.
Everything below his waist was gone, his left arm missing entirely. And everything else about him was completely burned and tattered.
But there was still life in him.
My hand around his neck finally let go as I crashed into the ground, boots landing with a hard crack of bedrock as his remains fell with a thud in front of me.
"Hehehe… Even with… a small window of success… I still could not… best you…" he laughed out, with what little breath he had.
Remnants of Scarlet's energy scattered from my skin as I stepped forward, gazing down at him under the open light of the hazy sky. "You make it sound like we fought more than once."
"Perhaps we have…" he said with a wry chuckle. "No matter… Your time… will come soon enough… Savor your minor victory for today…" he chuckled with a pained laugh. "It may be… one of your very last… before the Darkness consumes you… You will understand… what it truly means to be weak…"
The Dark… huh? "I never care to win. You just took something of mine, and she didn't deserve to be dragged into this."
"On that… we can agree on…"
I lowered my eyes to his would-be corpse. "Good."
At least we could agree on one thing, before I snuffed the lingering life out of him.
Co-Author: HydraFlow
Co-Author: andy2396
I'm part of a Discord server now? Link below.
So, I spent a long time considering whether or not to intermingle Niro's actions with Arex's side of this double-tailed arc. But I decided to drive straight through Niro's in this chapter.
Arex's starts in the next. Besides, I doubt Niro would've waited long to nearly die getting Anoel back.
He did take Scarlet along for more than her tracking. Let's just say he could use the boost in a facility that locked him out from outside sources.
Thoughts…? This was a weird fight that I'm usually not comfortable writing, so any critique is good.
On a side note, a big thanks to andy and HydraFlow. I usually don't mention them, but whenever their characters are involved, assume they're writing for those actions. I'll be putting in their author names as "Co-Author" tags from now on.
For now, Favorite and Follow the story.
I look forward to seeing REVIEWS for this. You'll be introduced to a LOT of concepts of mine. Feel free to give me your thoughts.
Cya XP
Also! If you wanted to speak with me more freely, I'm part of a Discord server with a handful of authors. Feel free to drop in and say hi and stay if you want to stick around.
[ discord . gg / YU8A6Bp ]
Don't forget to remove the spaces if you do use the link. FFN is finicky with formatting.
Omake: by us three
"I hate these…" Rae complained, sporting a pair of Arex's track pants now beneath her white t-shirt.
Arex didn't even want to look her way, but did anyway. Just to see Rae cupping her hands under her braless breasts beneath her clothes.
"They keep screwing with my balance." She continued to prod at them, Arex forcefully snapping her gaze away. "One hour of being a girl and I already hate it."
"You'll get used to it. It was a pain though…" Danni mentioned as she pushed her bust up a bit. "Well, in a way, thank you Inuba."
Can this not be a sexualized anime? Seriously? Arex stifled a groan.
"W-Well, that's your fault for being bigger than m-" the phoenix turned her heated gaze away just as Rae shot a glare at her to shut her up. Arex's tone immediately dropped. "You'll get used to it."
"I don't want to get used to it, Arex," the blonde girl admonished, despite her slight voice cracks.
"What do you think looks better…?" Nira suddenly asked calmly, the flutter of two new articles of clothing draped in her hands carrying into the room.
Arex looked over to see the short girl holding up a pair of leggings and a pair of short-shorts, both black and pretty form fitting.
The phoenix had a permanent blush on her cheeks by then. She just accepted it. Because it wasn't going away.
"They both would," Arex replied, sounding exhausted.
"Huh…" Nira closed her small mouth slowly before walking over, setting the two items on the end of Arex's bed. "I'm going shopping then. I need my own outfits."
Arex was shocked. "Seriously?"
"Mhm. Wanna come?" Nira asked, mind already set.
Why'd you have to hum like that?! Why'd you have to be so cute?!
"Take me with you, I need new everything…" Rae uttered defeatedly with a sigh. She was not enjoying this at all.
"Then I guess I'll drive us over," Danni said, flipping a pair of car keys between her fingers. "We'll put everything in the trunk."
Arex let out a heavy breath as she closed her eyes, trying her best to relax.
They were going out in public… with the three looking like this.
What could go wrong?
The sound of the door opening drifted through Arex's ears before her heart stopped, feeling three familiar heat signatures standing in the hall.
Oh god no! No!
This could go wrong! Why now?!
Of all places?! Why here?!
"Oh my god…" Anoel's voice sounded broken, soft, excited, literally a mixture of everything, as Arex fearfully opened her eyes.
"Hi. We're going to the mall," Nira spoke calmly, cutely. Her gaze flicked back and forth as she looked up at Lylac and Anoel in the doorframe. "Wanna come?"
Ano squealed and tackled Nira straight onto the carpet.
Arex's collar was very quickly grabbed by small hands as a pair of desperate, violet eyes bored into her own. "Arex please! Kill m-"
That grip was torn away from her by a pair of stronger arms wrapping their slim way around her waist and pulling her off the phoenix.
"I seriously hope I'm not dreaming," Ly exclaimed with an incredibly wide grin as she proceeded to examine Rae meticulously.
Inuba approached Danni with confusion, and despite the panic Danni held onto, she calmly stared back at the kitsune as best she could.
"Are you…?" Inuba asked, trailing off.
Clearing her throat, Danni found her voice. "I-I'm the eldest sibling, Danni. Nice to meet you," she said, bowing respectfully, and hoping Inuba would believe the statement.
"Oh, I'm sorry! I thought-"
"No, that's definitely Dante," Anoel spoke up from the ground, making Danni jolt up. A content Nira sat squeezed in Anoel's arms and watched comfortably from in her lap. "And this adorable little creature is Niro."
Ano's eyes turned to Rae in Ly's embrace, feet dangling, and Arex swore a devilish glint suddenly overtook her sister's eyes.
"And that's Ray."
Arex cleared her throat with a soft squeak, holding her fist against her lips as she hesitantly looked off to the side. "I gave them all different names, if it helps."
"Oh I'm glad you did, because whatever you gave this one is never going away," Ly replied mischievously, hands feeling every square inch of the furiously blushing Rae and eyes taking in every small detail.
"W-What happened to the three of you?!" Inuba exclaimed.
"I fell in a river," Nira answered simply, looking up at the fox from her place in Anoel's lap.
"I woke up like this," Danni answered with a shrug.
Rae just squeaked cutely and helplessly.
Arex sighed, her own embarrassment thankfully dying away as the levels of it spiked in other places within the room. "That one's Rae," she pointed out, emphasizing the 'e' change at the end before pointing to the other two. "Nira. Danni. Please don't do anything-"
"Too late," Anoel interrupted, Nira's hat resting on the floor as the elder phoenix peeked down into the front of the girl's slim coat collar.
Nira didn't seem to mind.
"I feel like a kid on christmas, this is the greatest moment of my life," Ly sounded out of character with how excited her tone was, like a different woman entirely as her grin only seemed to widen with every passing moment.
"I-I'm moving… to Atlas… a-and changing my… name," Rae wheezed between deep breaths.
Inuba seemed to be the only one taking this all semi-responsibly.
"Y-You look very attractive…" the kitsune managed to squeak out to Danni, her fox tail whipping about slightly and unsure where to look.
Arex needed to leave. There was way too much tension in the room for her to stay here…
"D-Do I now? W-Well, thanks for that…" the seemingly unflinching Danni answered with a reddened face.
Anoel's gaze suddenly grew curious as she popped her head up from over Nira's shoulder. "Hey, who's interested in a-"
"Ano. No," Arex shot down, hard.
The younger phoenix got up onto her feet and padded across the room, snatching her sneakers by her dresser before leaning down to slip them on.
"We're leaving. All of us," she muttered in a low, but clear voice. "This room's way too enclosed to be healthy."
"You're just leaving because you're hopelessly gay, Arex," Ly retorted, quirking an eyebrow as she turned to smirk at her. "You don't need to hide it from anyone. We're all girls here."
"T-That's not it!" Arex all but squealed, standing in her sneakers now with a burning blush.
"No, that's totally it. Your pulse has been going at high speed the whole time little bird," Danni answered. "Might as well be a hummingbird than a phoenix right now."
Shut it, Danni! "W-We're going to the mall! Right now!" Arex huffed out a hot breath as she reached down and plucked up Kit's boots too, bringing them to the kitsune on the bed. "They need clothes."
"Are we all going?" Nira asked curiously, head lulled slightly from Anoel's attentively brushing fingers through her hair.
"Yes," Arex replied sharply.
Nira just looked excited.