A/N: All right, it's midnight and I'm still writing from the last chapter. I hate you, imagination.
Disclaimer: I do not own Trinity Blood.
It was amazing how everything seemed awful about the city. There were no shops, just houses and work buildings, all two stories tall and painted white, gray, red, or dull blue. There was a huge building rearing out of the city and a spire reaching to the sky. The roofs of all the buildings, including the tower, were sharply built.
The worse thing of all was that the streets were filled with ranks of troops. All of the people seemed scared, and if they came too close to the troops, they were whipped or beaten mercilessly. It didn't matter if they were women or children, young or old. The streets were suspiciously void of any men besides the troops.
Even the skies above seemed to want to cave in on itself. Abel wanted to get on his knees there and then and there and pray for the city. He was about to just that when Tres clapped a strong hand on his shoulder.
"Status report, Abel Nightroad."
"This… this place is awful."
"He's fine, Tres. He just needs a moment." Father Leon said while looking at his friend with concern
"Acceptable."
Abel took a deep breath and let it out. "Right then, let's go and find a place to stay."
They walked for a bit when they came to a part in the road where it sloped downward slightly. They were walking across the street when it seemed a platoon of troops came to a crashing halt in front of them. A fart man stepped forward, his face red with anger.
"How dare you get in the way!" the fat man raised his whip. Abel and Leon raised their arms to protect themselves as the whip cracked the air and came swooshing down on them, but it never hit its mark.
Abel was the first to open his eyes. The figure of a small girl was before him. The whip was coiled around her thin arm. There was a sharp intake of breath, but the girl let it out slowly.
"What were you thinking? They are just travelers!" She yelled angrily at them. Her brown-red hair seemed to swirl angrily around her.
Quickly, the whip was bright back from her arm and slashed her across the face. She stepped back with a hiss of pain. As she moved back, Abel noticed that her big blue eyes seemed to be brimming with hatred for the man in front of her.
"Young lady, I am sorry but the punishment for meddling with the affairs of the government is being whipped until unconsciousness." The man's voice alone told Abel that he would like nothing more than to whip the small girl in front of him to death.
"I'll take it all." She snarled viciously, her very posture radiating her defiance.
The man smiled cruelly. "All right then." He whispered.
The girl stood stock still as the whip hit her. After a few minutes, a ring of curious troops and on lookers came to see the scene. The troops did nothing to shoo the people away from the girl's agony. In fact, they seemed to be enjoying themselves, making bets with the civilians.
A few minutes later, the whips drew blood. An hour after that, the girl had many cuts and was bleeding profusely. Abel couldn't stand the trouble they had caused.
"Please, stop!" he called piteously to the man with the whip. The man ignored him, hitting the girl extra hard a few times. The girl fell into a puddle, but with a grunt of effort, she pushed herself back up.
The man, realizing that this was going to go slowly, grinned wickedly and raised the whip again, while calling to his troops. "Get chains and salt water!" men hurried off to do his bidding.
Abel turned to the girl. "Fall down, pretend! Please, do not do this!" He cried out.
"No." The girl spoke for the first time. "I intervened. I'll take the punishment. But that doesn't mean I can't hate my punisher with every fiber of my being." Her voice was cold and smooth, but there was a fire in it that said more than her words.
An old woman clutched Abel's arm. He leaned down to listen. "That is Stella. She won't stop until she actually is unconscious, or stone cold dead. Don't worry. With the chains she'll go down. Leave, you'll only make this harder by telling her to pretend to be hurt."
Abel nodded. He called to his friends, "let's go." They left as the troops came back, hauling the first barrel of salt water.
Hours later, Abel sat with his arms crossed behind his head. He didn't feel right about something and wanted to go back to where they had left the girl. It was pitch dark out now, but he knew they had to leave. When he asked Tres and Leon, both agreed quickly.
When they came to the bottom of the hill where they had left the girl, Abel stopped them. He could see the crowd still standing under makeshift lights, but something else troubled him. He looked down and saw a crimson-nearly-black puddle pooling at his feet. A small stream was feeding it.
"Oh, dear lord, no." Abel whispered and charged up the hill.
Stella was standing there, nearly doubled over in pain, and holding her side, waiting for the next hit of the bloodied chain that was clutched grimly in a new guard's hands. Blood made her clothes cling to her slim figure, and there was a lot of it. Her entire front and back were covered in wicked looking gashes. The ones on her arms and legs that were not covered by her long brown- well, brown-red skirt.
Citizens were crying out for her to stay down, but she ignored them and stared her tormentor down, a waiting the next hit. It came, and she was sent flying back. So close, that Abel resisted the urge to reach out and save her. While she was down, the guard next to him poured a bucket of salt water of her. It was so bad that the water nearly hissed when it touched her wounds.
She hissed with pain, but got up nevertheless. Her determination and spite were admirable, if verging on the stupid. She coughed, and then spat out blood. A few minutes later, after Leon and Abel made the cries of the citizens twice as loud, the fat man from before came running up.
"I got it!" the man said with an evident glee that should not be heard out of a grown-man. He waved a piece of paper in his hand. He cleared his throat and said quite clearly, so all could hear, "For disobeying and deliberate rebelliousness to the government, you have been ordered by the head to be…" A malicious glint appeared in his eyes, "… executed."
Stella looked up, a distant and somewhat- detached look in her eyes. "So… whatever I do next. I'm gonna die. Is that right?"
"Well… er, yes." The man was put off by her obvious aloof attitude.
A slow smile crept its way across her face and the look in her blue eyes sent shivers down Abel's spine. "You know, a wise man I once knew told me, if you are going down, go down with a bam."
No later had she said this, when she moved her hands upward in a slicing motion. Abel's eyes grew wide as the earth in front of the man holding the whip came jutting out of the ground. The girl didn't even flinch as the man's neck snapped. Suddenly, Abel felt something beneath his foot. The water beneath the crowd pushed its way up and the girl twirled, arms outstretched. The water hit only troops as it froze.
Her eyes turned blood red, and Abel recognized the look of someone who was about to kill. He felt horrible, like someone punched him in the stomach. He couldn't do a thing to stop it.
The girl was raised into the air by some moment that gravity decided to stop working. Her face was one of both rage and impassiveness. The bloody water rose from the ground and encircled the last trooper standing, the fat man who had first caused her the pain. It covered his entire body, and the man knew he was going to die. The girl stared at him for one long breathless moment- before clenching her hand.
The man's last shriek echoed in the air. The water tightened and crushed in from the outside in. All that was left as the water leeched away was the mangled corpse. When the water left, the girl was placed back onto the ground.
The bloodlust left her eyes, and she looked around at the crowd. They all pulled back from her, as if she were something filthy. Abel stayed where he was. He offered her no disgust or anger, he left his face impassive. A small sob escaped the girl's throat and she ran then, running past Abel to the nearest alleyway.
As if just realizing she was gone, he whipped around and called out. "Wait."
She was gone, so Abel did the only thing that came to mind. He ran after her. He ran through the dank alleyway as fast as he could, yelling out to her, desperately, pleadingly.
He found her, a pile of bloody rags, sobbing at the farthest end of the alley. He offered out his hand to touch her shoulder, but she moved suddenly and looked at him with a pleading look that was sorrowfully familiar to him.
"I'm sorry…. I'm sorry you had to see that. I'm a monster." She whispered, still hiding her face from him.
Abel's heart clenched. He nearly hissed with the pain of it. Before he knew what he was doing, he stooped down and held her to him. He whispered into her hair, "You are not a monster."
A/N: All right I hope you all are grateful. It's 1:05 exactly. I hope you liked the chapter; I'm not so good at writing fight scenes.