Dawn breaks with Ragna blinking the sleep out of his eyes and grumbling. "Goddamn I hate mornings." he mumbles, and raises himself on his elbows to glance around. "Anyone up yet?" he asks with a yawn, and stretches slowly, working out the kinks of a night spent sleeping on burlap.
"Never been asleep to begin with..."
Caelica yawned, rubbing her eyes. She was still sitting there, her legs crossed, smiling.
"So do you have morning wood problems? I could help."
Her honest and bright smile didn`t fit well to her proposal, but it was far too honest to be decieving.
The ruby red eyes of the girl tried their hardest to meet his, taking advantage of the absence of Bullet for once.
Ragna opens his mouth to respond, and then his brain locks as he understands what Caelica just said. His eyebrow spasms and he makes an odd wheezing sound. "Uhm." he says, brain blank. "I - look, do I know you? Because you seem to, but I am in the dark here."
He sits up and stares at her harder. "Well. Actually you do look familiar. I'm just not sure how. You from one of the time loops or . . . eh . . . forget it. That way be dragons."
The Reaper shakes his head in bewilderment and replies, a bit more coherently, "No, I haven't had that problem in years. So, uh, no thanks." His life, up until this point, hadn't included many people that would give him such a reaction. The sparkle in the redhead's eyes begins to make him think that's already changed.
Caelica blinked a few times at the question about time loops... it was certainly wierd to see him here, after Kokonoe told her over a hundred years had passed since the Black Beast had been defeated... but she just ignored that little fact and enjoyed it that Ragna was here again.
"Uh... i... kind of don´t know, myself... Kokonoe just said that a lot of time passed since the Black Beast died, and I just assumed you were the Ragna i knew... or at least you look just like him, and talk like him, and act like him... Maybe you´re his son or something, who knows."
She shrugged, smiled, and already forgot what she had been talking about earlier.
In the meantime, Bullet came down the stairs, her head just a bit messier than ususal.
She looked a bit tired, cracked her shoulders and groaned.
"You know maybe i should have listened to you, afterall. That was kind of a shitty experience."
Ragna shrugs. "Well, fucking Hakumen is apparently my little brother timeshifted back and thrown in a tin can." he says in disgust. "I don't see why the same thing shouldn't happen to me too. It's family luck at this point. We all time travel. And try to kill Terumi. The family that slays together, stays together."
He snorts and stands, ambling over to Caelica and offering her a hand up. "Well, wherever you came from, you're welcome here." he says frankly. "So don't sweat it. Just try not to fall over and die anytime soon."
As Bullet descends the stairs, he turns and nods at her too. "Mornin'. And yeah, I told you that would probably suck. Sleeping on the floor gives you kinks but they can be walked off. Guess what you're about to do?" Ragna smirks. "We're heading to that base now. Hope you didn't count on breakfast; I don't carry rations for three people on me, sorry."
Caelica smiled at him, gratefully taking the hand and standing up- her legs were getting a bit tired, that was for sure.
"I´ll try to avoid that. That would be embarressing."
Bullet just yawned and shrugged it off.
"Nevermind breakfast. The whirlpool turned into a gooy green mess over the years, same as the entire rest of the bath... and the bed smelled kind of moldy, as comfy as it was. So if i´ve got ticks or something in my hair now, i know why."
She stretched herself again, grunting a bit while doing so.
"Sector Seven base it is then... hope they take better care of their bathrooms."
"Welp, you get your own sleeping bag from now on then." Ragna replied flippantly, as he released Caelica's hand and started forward. "Caelica, throw up that seithr shield thingamabob again, and let's get moving. We've got trail to burn today."
~*~
The Sector Seven base is, unsurprisingly, a bunker with a huge, intimidating mechanical door locked by a complicated-looking panel beside it. Ragna ignores this entirely as he walks up to the door, raps it with his knuckles, and listens to the sound echoing through the chamber beyond.
"I've got room." he says with a nod, and rears back, then slams a fist blazing with Grimoire energy into the locked portal. The steel screeches and dents inward, crumpling as the Reaper continues to rain blows down on the blockade until with a final shriek of metal, the hinges give and the entire contraption falls to the floor, revealing an enormous dark interior warehouse that stretches away into the shadows. Ragna peeks his head inside and frowns.
"The fuck is everything?" he asks in confusion. His voice echoes out into the empty space. "Aw, damn, did they evacuate it?"
Caelica hid herself behind Bullet as Ragna tore down the massive door with brute violence, but came up quickly enough to peek into the room.
"Huh, nothing here..."
Bullet, on the other hand, hesitated to go into the room, feeling the nasty itch of a trap. The obviously locked door was a challange for anyone without Ragna´s kind of power, but they would`t leave it locked if there was nothing inside anyways.
They wanted him to break in, and for whatever reason that was, it couldn`t be good.
Slowly, she approached the two and pulled Caelica back.
"I could be wrong, but everything about this screams of a trap, Ragna." She muttered, her voice a bit shaky.
Somehow, she didn`t want to be here.
"Same." Ragna replies, unshaken. "Best way to find out - walk in." He does exactly that, Bloodscythe on shoulder, eyes wary and left hand sheathed in crawling shadow, ready for any sort of ambush. This is the Reaper - the man who trashes armies and NOL branches with equal impunity, one of the finest swordsmen of his age.
That's why it throws him off balance when a blue-haired man in vaguely oriental dress strides out of the darkness ahead, not making even the slightest attempt to cloak his presence. "Who are you?" Ragna asks, blinking. "Wait - how long have you been in here?"
"Too goddamn long." The man growls, glancing between Ragna and his companions, eyes narrowed. "I've been so incredibly bored. Bored. BORED!"
He launches forward and hurls a punch at Ragna. Nonplussed, the Reaper tilts the flat side of Bloodscythe into the way to block. The fist slams into the steel and keeps going - then plows into Bloodedge's side, the force blunted by the broad surface of his blade - and when the hook finishes, it slings both man and sword a dozen feet away, skittering over the damp concrete floor.
"Weak!" the bluette roars. "I woke up for this?"
"God damn it all!" Bullet yelled, charging in after Ragna was beaten away.
"Just the man i`ve been so not wanting to see! I hope the bounty will be worth the bruises i get...!"
Less talk, more broken bones. Activating her Armagus, she aimed at his legs with a low legsweep, trying to get the huge man off of his footing before trying anything else. Charging at him with punches would be sucide, seeing how his right fist was nearly the size of her head, and his arm could easily be her entire torso. Silently, she prayed for the best, then shut herself off of the mortal world, focusing on the fight with everything she had.
Caelica could do nothing but watch her idol and love interest fly a couple of meters, landing on his back like a ragdoll.
That man stopped the Black Beast, easily, without backup... and this blue haired monster didn´t even have to try to knock him around.
She used to fight with Nirvana, but she was no longer hers to command. Her magic was only defensive, healing people, protective barriers, the sort... and they all had a radius. So if she would try to protect Ragna from Seithr influence, she would protect Azreal as well as soon as he stepped into the barrier...
Azrael makes a vicious gesture with his right hand, summoning a wall of rock that takes the sweep kick for him. "Oh, you want to try?" he leers, and smashes the wall with his left hand, raining bits of shattered stone at Bullet. "Come on, little bird, and show me what you've got!"
Ragna rises with a snarl and hurls Bloodedge in a glittering arc just over Bullet's head, impaling the rock wall and intercepting the rock shower, as well as Azrael's fist, making the sword quiver again under the blow. The angle, this time, is wrong; Azrael winces as his smallest knuckle clips the thick steel. "Now!" The Reaper barks, lunging to Azrael's right to flank him.
Taking Ragna´s offense as a means to help her own, Bullet`s fist engulfed in fire due to the Armagus effects and headed straight for Azreal`s guts, aiming far away from where Ragna would strike to avoid hitting him- or getting hit by him, on accident.
Her leg was a bit bruised from the impact on the rock wall, but she wasn´t about to back down just now- if she would, she`d certainly be dead...
She also needed to think ahead. Her left hand gripped the loose tail end of his pants and held it tight... if she`d get hit by him, he`d be dragged along- if he would be hit hard enough to fall over, he wasn`t going to... a minor disadvantage, considering that the constraint might distract him just enough for them to land a second hit on the mass of muscles they faced.
Bullet's fist impacts in Azrael's gut, and he exhales with the hit - and then grins down at her, a brutal expression. "Good!" he roars. "Good hit!" Then he clamps a hand over Bullet's where she'd grabbed his pants, and his back whipcracks forward as he launches a headbutt with all the force of a sledgehammer.
Ragna comes in from the side and takes advantage by hurtling forward in a Hell's Fang, but skidding onto his knees halfway through and connecting the technique with the back of Azrael's knee. He buckles with a hateful gasp and shoves at Bullet, trying to get some space between himself and his twin foes.
Not only was Bullet concussed by the massive head impact that left a mark on her forehead, knocking her to the ground in an instant, but Ragna`s intervention let her hand slip off of Azreal`s sash, falling to the ground alone and rolling over to try and get up as fast as she could.
Dizzy and disoriented, she powered up her Armagus again for the next strike, the fire engulfing her tightly.
"Guh.. that hurt like a bitch..!"
Regardless of her condition, she rushed forward again and aimed at his lower body with a mighty uppercut, uncaring whatever it would hit vital organs or sensitive regions. Either way would be fine, so long as this madman was stopped.
Caelica, stunned at the sheer brutality the three were going at it and horrified at the sheer glee Azreal had, getting two-timed by Bullet and Ragna, finally found herself back in the real world and remembered what her Sister gave her "for emergancies, to protect herself and call for help".
Taking a small, pistol shaped weapon out of her coat, she pointed it at Azreal and fired without hesitation, hoping it would at least not kill him..
Instead of shooting a bullet at the bodybuilder, a ball of fire hissed from the barrel, seven or more times brighter than a candle and fast as a baseball...
Shortly before hitting the man near his chest, it exploded in a blinding light and a loud bang, like a flare should do seventy or more meters above ground.
"... huh?! Sis, thats... that´d be useless! ...unless..." Her lacking sense of direction was legendary, and Nine was aware of that... so in her case, an emergancy would be when she got lost somewhere...
"...Damn you, Konoe!"
Azrael whips around, one hand clenched in a hammerfist that sweeps by Ragna's head as he ducks. The Reaper rolls to the side, ripping his blade out of the wrecked stone wall, and almost manages to swing it around when the blue berserker plows into his side and nails him to the ground with a monstrous right hook. He rears back to stomp Ragna's head into a gory mess, but then the flare explodes not four feet from his head, extracting a frustrated shriek as he flinches and stumbles back.
Ragna rolls and swings wide and low with Bloodscythe, smacking into Azrael's armored boot. It doesn't cut through, but it does knock that foot out from under him, allowing Bullet's charging uppercut to connect firmly with his crotch. He spasms, full-body, and then flails an arm at Bullet, taking an awkward sort of hop away. Azrael's eyes grow bloodshot with pain and fury as he screams, "NOT ENOUGH! NEVER ENOUGH!"
Bullet groaned in annoyance as she had been showered by burning magnesium and phosphorus fires- hotter than the flames her Armagus made, but aside from being a bit singed, it wasn´t serious.
She didn`t even think about it, the only thing she thought about was: How the hell do we take this guy down. He just took four straight hits and a flaregun to the face, and he`s just asking for more.
Her Armagus sure wasn`t going to put out more just because she wanted more power. If she needed it, she would have to take drastic actions...
Dashing forward with all the strength in her legs, she partially ran up a wall and rebound off of it- at Azreal`s back. Bullet turned in mid-flight, both her boots aimed for the back of his head. If it just had enough force, maybe it would knock him unconcious... or maybe break his neck, whatever came first, she`d welcome it.
Caelica, tossing the empty flare gun away with dismay, now seeing the burn marks Ragna was covered in. Bullet was partially protected by her own fire, but Ragna had been mere inches away from the explosion... and he seemed so hopped up on Testosterone that he probably didn´t even feel it.
It didn`t take long for her to come to the conclusion that support was the only thing she could do in this situation.
"Ragna!"
Running up to the Reaper, she held out both hands to him until she touched his back- her magic flew into him, healing the charred tissue, boils and burns without a scar... but that wasn`t enough, her arms wrapped around him and held him tight, still healing him constantly further in the fear he might take a hit soon.
"Ragna... i´m sorry, i didn`t mean to hit you too!"
Azrael's posture is too off-balance, his limbs too outstretched, for him to dodge Bullet's latest assault. Her heels slam in tandem into the back of his head, and no matter his monstrous will to fight or his bloodlust, his brain cuts out from beneath him like a hangman's trapdoor. He drops.
Ragna surges forward and drops a fist into the other man's head as he drops, bouncing the blue berserker's head off the concrete floor hard enough to leave cracks in the architecture. The Reaper snarls and twitches, fingers clenching convulsively - the sundered dregs of Azrael's soul swirling in his system, howling for blood. Even the faintest taste clouds his mind with endless rage, and only the faint clutch of arms around him hold him back from savaging his fallen foe into dismembered scraps.
Consciousness rises again slowly, along with the realization that his hair is on fire. "Shit." Ragna grumbles, and reaches up to squeeze out the lingering flames dancing in his white locks. "Well, that was underwhelming. Good fighter though."
He glances down at the arms around him and then back at Caelica, with an owlish blink. "Oh hey. Thanks, I didn't notice. What spell was that? It looked pretty cool." Unsure how to respond to the sudden embrace, he awkwardly pats the woman's hands.
Bullet landed on her side, skitting across the floor due to the force she put into that kick, and panted heavily for a moment before getting back up.
"Well... that was.. rough. Don´t ever want to do that again."
Without much hesitation, she ran over and applied a restriction ars on Azreal, which signaled the NOL that issued the bounty where to find him and who took him in.
With someone like Azreal, bringing him to the local office just wasn´t possible... restraining him was the most she could do, and she actually had her doubts if that was enough. Still, she didn`t want to stick around any longer.
"Ragna? We should get moving. The NOL will be here soon, and i don`t think you wanna meet them... as far as i can see they took this bunker apart when they left, so we won´t find what we`re looking for here..."
Caelica pressed herself tightly against Ragna, the man who saved her life countless times a hundred years prior, before the magic actually restored the burnt hair as well. Slowly, she came to her senses and let go, exhaling deeply.
"That was no spell, that was... something my sister gave me for emergancies. I never used it, so i just assumed it was some sort of gun... but now that i did, what the heck was she thinking? What if i was about to get raped or something? It would just mildly annoy the guy!"
Bullet chuckled at her outburst and crossed her arms.
"Well, given how you set Ragna on fire, i doubt he`d be much interested in you after that."
"To be fair, unless the guy is a tank like me 'r this dumbass here, that would have gotten them off you." Ragna concedes, waving a hand at the downed Azrael. "That stings pretty bad. Plus it lit me on fire. That's a good combo for dissuading harassers." He frowns. "Not a point-blank thing though, I admit."
He rolls his shoulders uncomfortably as Caelica squeezes him then lets go - he's dense, he knows that, but her attraction is obvious. He'll have to deal with it when they get a moment alone without Bullet. Or something. "I dunno what she did to piss you off, Bullet, but lay off, yeah? Anyways, let's just leave the bastard here. I'll block the door again. Hopefully that slows him down enough for the NOL to get here."
Ragna runs an eye over the mercenary. "Thanks for the heal, Caelica. Think you can donate some of that magic juice to pulling Bullet back up to par? There's another way out of here but it's pretty rough."
Caelica nodded once, smiling lightly, then hopped over to Bullet to place some healing hands on her shoulders.
Immidantly, the mercenary sighed in relief, her aching leg ceasing to cause problems and the bruises she got from the battle ceasing to exist.
Not even a minute later, she was left without a scratch- except from the scar she already had on her face.
"Nah, its fine, Ragna... i didn`t mean -you- would stop to be interested in her." She smirked a bit. "You look like you might like it rough... but someone trying to assault her probably doesn't."
Patting her shoulder as a way of saying thanks, Bullet cracked her knuckles.
"Speaking of rough, i´m all ears- Where do we go?"
Meanwhile the young witch was unsure if she should take the flare gun along... the empty case told the whole story, that thing wasn`t gonna fire again unless she found another flare in her endless coat pockets.
But instead of finding one, she found something entirely more potent- a modern replica of the FP-45 Liberator pistol, built out of modern materials for a more lasting experience.
"Oh, silly me! Here`s the thing she gave me...! ...then, where DID that flare gun come from?"
She shrugged, tucking the small pistol away for later use. It didn´t matter anyway.
"I don't." Ragna replies idly. "I get enough abuse from my little sibs as it is. Abusive affection ain't my thing because of that. Anyways, my bad for misunderstanding."
He turns and points up at the derelict monorail that runs over the city, its rails empty as they run through the abandoned port. "The monorail car's gone, but there should still be a counterweight there to switch the tracks back and forth. We hop into that and activate the maintenance procedure, which makes it check the rail for any faults or breaks in the line - and when it gets to the end of the track at the next station, we hop out and move on. Best part is that there's no surveillance on them. I use 'em to get around all the time."
Ragna scowls. "Bad part is that it's a bumpy-ass ride. So let's head back to that hotel place and grab as many blankets as we can, unless you want to arrive at our next stop a bruise exhibit."
Then he blinks at the pistol Caelica extracts from her gun case. "The shit was that fifteen seconds ago? . . . Nevermind, I'm glad you've got it now. Come on, girls."