4. Bullets & Old Bosses
Masquerade sat in the room that had become his cage, finding himself biting back curses aimed at himself - For his foolishness, for his naivity. He should have known that accursed woman didn't need or want Alice, after all, hadn't he endured hours of watching helplessly as Alice got kicked around, abused, and generally roughed up. If they had wanted her, they wouldn't have done that at all - No sense in damaging the goods. They probably thought that her pain would make him more likely to fall for their trap. And it had worked, obviously. Masquerade made a single, barking laugh. Ha! Well, he wasn't falling for that again.
Eventually, he tired of sitting around, and began pacing slowly from one end of the space to the other, hands linked loosely behind his back, and a grim smile of concentration upon his face. He knew he needed a plan, and needed one fast. Before the had came back to enact whatever plan she had for him to 'Save the world'. As far as Masquerade reckoned, as long as a certain white dragon from another dimension stayed dead, this world was hardly in a lot of trouble. Although perhaps it would have been better for Naga to have won - Alice would have never been kidnapped, especially whist she was still his host, and by extension, the daft circle that had trapped him here would have never been drawn. Masquerade frowned - What was he thinking? No good would have come if Naga had won. He would have wrecked both Vestrioa and Earth. He shook his head to clear the thoughts. No good would come of dwelling on ancient history now.
His attention was attracted to the door of the room, as the scraping of bolt-locks being undone echoed throughout the room. Shortly after that, there was a small click, and the door swung wide open. The woman (He had no interest in her actual name, so 'the woman' had become a nickname for her) was accompanied by two burly men, equipped with heavy looking rifles. The woman herself produced a small handgun, and turned to scrub out the runes around the door, and then turned to Masquerade.
"Don't even think about running away, the bullets in these guns are... special."
Masquerade didn't know what made them so special, but decided it probably wasn't prudent to try and run off, not that he knew if he even could run off...
They were walking down a long, long corridor for a long time. It wasnt anything special - Just cold, clinical and white, with a few rooms branching off, but the doors had no glass in them, so Masquerade didnt know what was inside them. However, he did see the interior of the room at the very end of the corridor. It was a pretty massive room, the walls lined with computers, and thick cables on the floor, mostly connected to a large, rectangular tank, with a sort of vague, misty shape inside. It looked a little like some sort of bird, ora bat, or something. Nevertheless, Masquerade was getting a bad feeling from it. He was ushered into one of two cylinders, connected to the tank by tubes coming from the base of them, and from tubes connected to the top of the cylinder, and clipped securely to the ceiling.
Masquerade immediately attempted moving through the transparent tube, however, unlike most materials, the tube was very solid, and Masquerade found himself thouroughly trapped inside. He glanced to the other tube. Inside was the spirit of a young girl, trapped, like himself, however, unlike him, she looked scared out of her wits, weak, and crumpled at the bottom of the tube. Masquerade took a sharp breath. What was happening here?
He had no more time to ponder this, however, as some attendant flipped a switch, and an awful feeling swept over Masquerade. The girl in the other tube obviously felt it too, as her mouth opened in a silent scream, as she beat on the sides of her prison. Large pieces of his body began to drift upwards, looking like long ribbons of smoke. He watched the side of his thumb in amazement as it dissolved.
Suddenly, a great surge of anger washed over the spirit. He was not going to die like this! It was pathetic! Trapped, and fed to some dragony-bird thing. He was Masquerade, and he was far too cool to cease existing quite yet!
He pressed his hands to the side of the cylinder, and pushed outwards on it, his fury lending him a mad surge of strength, until he was rewarded with a small cracking sound, and then the cacaphony of smashing glass. Upon seeing this, and the furious spirit that emerged, most of the humans in the room scattered, then rushed for the exit, like the bunch of cowards they were (Even with 'special' guns, they still wouldn't fight him!). Masquerade paid no mind to this, instead smashing open the other cylinder, containing the girl's spirit.
However, when he touched her, intending to pull her out, her body began losing its form, as it had during the abandoned procedure, but instead of drifting up to the top of the tube, she flowed into Masquerade. He pulled his hand back, too late, as if the girl had been some sort of poisonous animal. "What the...?" Masquerade muttered, confused at what had just occured, annoyed at his own inability to save others on his own, yet also darkly pleased. Eventually, he shrugged off the feelings, remembering there was something else in the room he could try his new power on.
Masquerade walked, seemingly calmly, towards the large tank at the rear of the room, that contained what was now unmistakeably a dragon - A white dragon, to be more specific. That explained the feeling of dread he had gotten when he first laid eyes on it. It had to be Naga. From the vaguely tattered wings, to the misty cleft muzzle, there was no mistaking it - The woman had been trying to revive Naga. Masquerade began to pace the length of Naga's tank. What to do? He doubted he could break the glass again - He didn't really feel angry anymore - Just numb, and he had no idea if he could repeat what he did to the girl with his ex-boss...
After some time, Masquerade's attention shifted to a black shape in the corner of his vision. He made his way over to it. The black thing turned out to be a handgun. Did this have the special qualities his captor had been bragging about? Masquerade's lips quirked up in a slight smirk. Really, there was only one way to find out. He picked up the gun, feeling upbeat at the fact he could actually pick things up now. He had no idea why, but he had a feeling that might have had something to do with the girl he... absorbed... In any case, he pressed the gun to his palm, and pulled the trigger.
There was a bang, followed by an extrodinary amount of pain. Masquerade lifted his injured hand to inspect it - The bullet had made a lovely clean hole, and though it could have possibly been the worst pain he had ever been in, it proved the bullets worked, and, better than that, he had proved it without freeing possibly the worst boss in existence. Masquerade pointed the firearm at Naga's misty head, and fired off several bullets at him, smashing a large hole in the tank, and puncturing the dragon's white head like a balloon. Unfortunately, the wounds didn't seem to be particularly fatal, as Naga decided that having an ex-henchman shoot him in the head was a good reason to spit fire into the room, and though it affected nothing in the room, Masquerade could feel the intense heat pushing him away from the dragon.
Shooting in Naga's direction some more, Masquerade swore to himself, watching Naga move out from his tank, and through the ghost-fire, towards him. The bullets were really not doing what he hoped they'd do - The things made holes, and caused pain, but that was really about it, and this, added to the fact that Naga seemed to be regenerating quickly, made Masquerade's situation seem more and more hopeless. The white dragon was nearly on top of him, so Masquerade aimed to hit his square in the eye, but, unfortunately, the gun merely clicked when he pulled the trigger - Out of bullets. He laughed nervously. "Surely we can talk about this?"
Naga said nothing, however, his tail whipped around, and caught Masquerade hard in the side, flinging him like a rag-doll across the room.
"Come on, Naga! Be reasonable!" Masquerade knew his grovelling would get him nowhere, but by this time, he couldn't really stop himself.
Naga again, ignored him, however, instead of abusing his ex-employee some more, he opened his jaws, and began to breathe in Masquerade, absorbing him, as he had tried to do with the Silent Core, once upon a time. At first, this seemed to go without a hitch, and Naga spread his wings in preparation of flight. However, before he could, his body began decomposing - Starting with his tail and his wings, his once magnificent body crumbled away as if it was rotten wood, and like a phoenix from the ashes, from Naga's corpse, came Masquerade.
He was changed too - His normally pristine white trench-coat was tattered and shredded, as Naga's wings had once been, and the fingers on his right hand were twisted into cruel, black, talons. Masquerade grinned, showing off viciously pointed teeth. He wasn't sure what had happened, but his escape from Naga had certainly given him a wicked power-up. And now, he just had to figure out how to use it...