A/N: This RPG took place before Remix Heart Chapter 11 was out, so Ragna falsely states that the Mage`s guild no longer exists. Just saying before someone points it out.
Ragna wakes up with crusted drool on his chest and hair in his mouth, along with a hangover. It's sad to note that this is, in fact, not a bad morning by his standards. He takes a moment to recognize the head on his chest as Caelica's, then pokes it. "Cae." he mumbles, wincing. "Your drool is sticky. Get up or get off or something."
Bullet is nearby, in what looks like a seriously uncomfortable position. He decides not to wake her just yet. She's going to have kinks.
A mumble was heard, then the head of the smaller girl slowly rose up to face his.
Her red-brown eyes slowly opened, still sleepy and wide, with a bit of drool hanging from her mouth as Caelica grinned stupidly at him.
"Morning Ragna."
With that, she climbed off of Bullet and fully onto Ragna, yawning into her hand. Uncaring for what he might see when she was above him in a loose bathrobe, she stretched like a kitten for a while, then she plopped back down, her face now buried in his pillow.
Ragna grunts as Caelica climbs onto him, and opens his mouth to tell her off, when she stretches and the loose bathrobe slides open completely for a moment, brainlocking him with the sight of her bare breasts. That feeds right into his usual morning problem and complicates things immensely. Then he remember that it's his freaking adoptive mother that he's getting turned on by and his skull just about turns itself inside out, which then immediately compounds his hangover.
The upshot of this is that Ragna lets out a half-groan, half-hopeless chuckle and closes his eyes again. "Glad you're comfortable." His hands fidget for a moment, unsure of where to go with half-naked family on top of him, but settle for stroking her hair. It's a nice, neutral, non-skin area. "I gather you feel pretty good this morning."
Caelica muttered something into his pillow which was supposed to mean "I´m sleepy" but instead came out as "mhm mphhmm."
Rolling over slightly to make her tired eyes face him, a light smile came up.
"My analysis has shown that Bullets jawoobies are not suitable for drowning in them, which means they`re smaller than those of my big sis. But only ever so slightly. In other news, i really needed that sleep."
While Bullet and Ragna had been sleeping in the hotel, Caelica had stayed up and despite the fact that she had been knocked out before, being unconcious didn`t regain any of her energy which left her exhausted, though not tired the day after her spawning.
"I still don´t know whats going on, any of it, but waking up next to... or on top of you guys feels good."
Ragna snorts helplessly, and squeezes Caelica a bit in his arms. "I'm glad that I measure up as a pillow even with my lack of jawoobies. You've had a rough couple days, what with being dumped out here in nowhere with the face of a guy you . . . really look up to . . . pasted on a stranger, and with a nasty concussion to boot."
He bites his lip and contemplates his options. Bullet, presumably, has a place to go. Caelica, though, is a century out of time, and totally displaced on top of that.
"The Mage Guild isn't a thing anymore, but I'll try to find someplace for you to fit in." Ragna says. "Dunno how much I can do, being a fugitive and all, but I figure anything less makes me kind of a jerk."
"If Terumi is still alive then i fear for the worst anyway." Caelica`s eyes looked away from him. "If a hundred years passed, surely Sis must be dead by now, one way or the other... and if he`s loose, i can imagine what happens. Get the Alpha unit, destroy Amaterasu and then he`ll go after the Lynchpin."
She rubbed her temple and groaned.
"Ugh. Thinking bad. Hangover bad. Head hurts."
Bullet, on the other side of the bed, shifted around and cracked her eyes open lightly, hearing the noise of the two.
"... I smell morning wood."
She commented, casting her eyes down on Ragna to a buldge in the bedsheets.
"You spend a lot of time inspecting those closely, do you?" Ragna replies dryly to Bullet. "That happens when a half-naked lady gets on top of me, yes." He shakes his head, and glances back at Caelica. "Don't you worry about Terumi. I've hunted that bastard every day for years - he's not about to get away with anything, not again. I've done fucked up his plans twice as it is."
He smirks in satisfaction at the fond memories of pissing Terumi off. "Anyways, my point is I'm on top of it. But right now - you're on top of me, and that's causing problems that Bullet has raised. Mind getting off?"
Caelica doesn´t even blush when he adresses this, and rolls over to Ragna`s side.
Bullet in the meantime grins weakly and slowly sits up.
"Didn`t mean to interrupt you or anything... and i think i didn`t raise that problem, but she did~"
A giggle came from his side.
"Raised it up vertica-aah!"
She actually managed to fall out of the bed and land on her side, rubbing her head from hitting it on the soft carpet floor.
"Ow. It always has to be my head, doesn`t it." She complained, then slowly rose up, inching over to the bathroom to fix her bedhair.
Ragna snorts again, that helpless smile resurfacing. "Teases, the lot of you." He mutters, sitting up and stretching to the soundtrack of popping bones. "What would you do without a red-blooded male her to frustrate? Flash the waiting staff and watch them stand sideways for the rest of the day?"
He rolls off to the side of the bed and reaches beneath it, procuring a trio of loose T-shirts, one of which he tosses to Bullet. "I dunno your sizes, so I had them send up a pretty big shirt." he says, almost apologetic. "Better than being too small, best I can figure. And it is a change of clothes. We've been needing those pretty bad of late."
Ragna glances at Caelica. "Speaking of which, if you want to use the bathroom, hurry up. We all need to freshen up."
"I`ll be quick about it~" Caelica said from the bathroom, which she kept open since she was only going to do her hair anyway.
Bullet, on the other hand, held on the shirt he got her to see if it theoretically fit her... there was the noticeable barrier in the front, but with a bit of tugging, that wouldn`t be a problem. Clothes were fricking miracles these days, she had seen tops that frankly seemed to defy gravity sometimes.
"Thanks." She responds, patting his shoulder with a smirk. "I would try it on, but that would only make things worse... so i`ll wait till our youth faction is done combing her hair." A thought later, she grins. "So does this mean the Grim Reaper will actually wear something else for a change?"
Ragna gives the t-shirt he selected for himself with a gimlet eye. "Yes, though I doubt I'm going to enjoy it." he mumbles, and slides into the article of clothing with a grunt, popping his head out of the collar and pulling at the fringe until it all fit, more or less. He grimaces and fidgets with the right sleeve - it's sticking to his arm. "Fucking fabrics never go well with this thing."
Rather than fuck around with it further, he just tears the sleeve off entirely, neatens the ragged edge with a few further rips, and nods in satisfaction. "That'll do. Now I just need pants. Matter of fact, we all need pants. Apparently they're in short supply here."
Ragna stands and heads to the door, waving over his shoulder. "I'll hit the tourist shop and grab anything else we need, and then we can move on, alri-"
He opens the door. On the other side, frozen in place, are a squad of NOL soldiers in wetsuits, one holding an unarmed breaching charge about two inches away from where the door had been. They gawk up at the Reaper as he frowns.
"Well fuck y'all." He says, pulls the door off its hinges, and swings it like a club, demolishing the entryway and scattering the soldiers like bowling pins.
Bullet blinked at the oneslaught, but quickly grabbed her Armagus and slid it on, where it automatically wrapped tightly around her arm.
"Hey, leave a few for me. I`m in dire need for some morning gymnastics."
With this, she hurries after him, cracking her knuckles. She`d have to fight in a bathrobe, but so be it. Rather that than naked, or in a puppet suit.
Blissfully unaware of all this, Caelica combs her hair until its tied into a neat ponytail again and she smiles at her mirror image.
"Ragna will love us like this, won`t he, my dear mirror? Yes he will." She whispered, giggling deviously. She wasn`t fooling anyone, but everyone needed some fun from time to time.
The initial insertion team had been seven soldiers and a lieutenant overseeing them; the poor soul holding the breaching charge was already down and out, having been directly in front of Ragna when he decided to remodel the room's architecture.
Three break in a disciplined rush for the far end of the hallway and the east stairwell, dropping grenades behind them to cover their retreat. Ragna promptly swings the door again and bashes through the floor, sending the explosives down to the next level and spinning down the hallway there, as well as reducing the already damaged door he wields as a weapon to splinters. The Reaper turns and hurls the scrapwood at the other end of the hallway, where the other half of the team has taken cover in the snack lounge, setting up a heavy rifle on a table. The wooden projectile smacks the barrel off angle, so that when it roars the heavy 7.56 mm rounds tear through the adjacent room instead of their opponent's body, throwing up a dust screen of ruptured drywall. Meanwhile, the lieutenant ducks into the room opposite his quarry's and slams the door shut, locking it.
Ragna flings up a hand and a hydra head roars from the ground underneath Bloodscythe in the far corner of the room, catching the blade in its teeth and hurling it to the Reaper. He catches the heavy weapon one-handed and spins it up in front just in time to catch the rifle's fire as the operator readjusts his aim. Bullets ping off the enormous sword as Ragna crouches, seithr gathering in arcing pools underneath him.
"INFERNO DIVIDER!" he roars, and splits the floor open in a vicious slice all the way to the snack lounge - just as the grenades in the hall beneath detonate in an ear-popping explosion.
The entire west wing of that floor collapses, sending the machine gun operator and his compatriots down in a storm of debris.
Then a bright burst of light punches through the wall of the room the lieutenant hides in, spearing Ragna through the shoulder and leaving a clean-burnt hole about the size of a quarter straight through. He hisses in pain.
"Caelica will take care of that when we`re done here." Bullet reassures him, standing back and keeping the soldiers off his six while he was fighting. As much as she loved being in the offensive, standing anywhere near Ragna`s attack range was lethal to her, so she kept from it as long as she could.
A window shattered next to her, and a ziprope was flung in- the soaring noise of a shebalve above suggested a military team about to go in.
"You had your fun. Those are mine." Charging her armagus, she was engulfed in flame a second later- another second later, her right fist connected with the chin of a special infantry soldier on the zipline. He wasn`t just knocked out, he was flung off of the rope about seven feet, falling to his demise three stories deeper.
Then she took a hold of the line while the others got on it- tugging it inside, again and again, the soldiers on the rope were smacked against the outer wall of the hotel against their will- two fell off, the other three were sucessful to break a window next to her and climb inside.
"You shouldn`t have done that." She purred, getting in a feral stance while they drew out magical-looking heavy carbines, which fired a sort of enchanted projectile in rapid sucession.
Regardless of the gunfire, Bullet charged forward, her aura of fire making her seem like a flying fireball as she bounced off of the walls to avoid making it too easy for them.
After a full 360 off of all four walls, her left foot connected firmly with the protective visor of a heavy infantrist- it left him unharmed, but it knocked him over, making it easy for Bullet to drop down and ram her elbow into his neck, killing him instantly.
The two others, turning around rapidly to get her while she was busy. Bullet tossed the lifeless body of their colleage at the first guy, then kicked the second against the cheek, slamming him against the wall uncomfortably enough that his neck broke, despite the heavy armor.
Her flames extinquished and the carnage ceased for the monent- Bullet looked somewhat disappointed that the blood on her body wasn`t from the soldiers. She got hit a couple of times dodging the projectiles, which ended up leaving some nasty burns and flesh wounds.
Hopped up on adrenaline and testosterone, she didn`t even feel the pain, but now that she noticed it, it was starting to hurt pretty badly.
Ragna idly summons a second Dead Spike into the wreckage covering the machine gun team, chewing the debris into bloody sawdust and eradicating their chances of a second round. "Go for it." he says, a little off-balance at the mercenary's eagerness. It's weird to have backup, but not really bad weird. Energizing, more like. He starts to bounce on the balls of his feet, then turns and shreds the wall of the lieutenant's room, just as the second lightbeam goes off. It clashes with the sword and deflects it up and through the ceiling, burning clear through until daylight spills into the hallway from the holed ceiling.
The lieutenant backpedals, leaping backwards through the room's window without hesitation, and Ragna is too far away to catch him with a Hell's Fang. The Reaper clicks his tongue and turns to the east stairwell as a head pokes out of it and points a rifle at him. Bullets zip down the hallway again, and Ragna responds with a second Inferno Divider - this one aimed higher, thrown harder, until he rips through the ceiling and lands on the floor above. He sprints down the hallway and leaps into the air, then comes screaming back down in a Belial Edge, punching back through the floor and obliterating the stairwell door, as well as most of the wall around it. He doesn't catch the man who had shot at him with that strike - he's descending the stairs already, on the move after missing his shot - but the tectonic tremor has thrown him off balance, and Ragna immediately turns and swings at him. Bloodscythe shears through the stairs, the railing, and the soldier with equal ease, blasting the top half of his body across the stairwell to smack into the wall. Blood paints the wall and the sword red.
One of his teammates leaps out the window again, using some kind of rappeling hook to make the landing safely, the same trick the lieutenant had used. The other stands still, stunned, staring at the bisected body of his teammate, who is screaming incoherently, grasping at the entrails that have spilled out of his ruined abdomen.
Ragna swats the obvious rookie like a fly, and then kicks out the exterior wall, searching for more opponents. The whine of a Shebalve autocannon gives him his answer, and he has to swing up Bloodscythe into a protective shield as the gunship begins to rain fire down upon him from the sky outside the hotel.
"Okay, now how the hell do we get rid of the Shebalve? Its gonna burn this place to the ground if we don´t do something."
Bullet responded to him over the noise of its main gun. They were both fighters for close combat, not suited for something like ground to air battle.
Caelica had a handgun, and a flare gun, but an RPG would be a bit too much to ask from the young witch to have lying around somewhere...
She didn´t know the exact specs of that type of Shebalve, but if its armament was anything to go by it was safe to assume that those weapons bays on its belly were loaded. Possibly something explosive...
Bullet looked over to her brother in arms, then at her wounds. ...better a risky suicide plan than none at all.
"...Okay, i got something. Try to best them without me for a while." She yelled at him, running over to the window... the shebalve was just turning around above them, going for a second approach and it was going to split the hotel wide open with this one... nothing Ragna or Caelica could do against that, if it wanted, it could turn this place into ashes.
And so, Bullet decided to do what she had to- as the shebalve came over and a buzzing sound indicated it was hovering in place now to tear the whole floor down, she ran as fast as she humanly could to the window, stepped onto the frame of the broken window and leaped onto the flying machine, impacting on its cockpit window.
Fractically trying to get a hold of the plane that was slipping out of her hand, Bullet eventually clung onto a handlebar that was designed to open the cockpit manually, if necessary... she didn`t need to, her Armagus crashed into the window and cracked the head of the pilot underneath, who she then tugged out and tossed while the plane still hovered in place, ready to fire.
"Okay..." She could nurse the bruises she got from this stunt later, now she had to make sure this thing wasn`t going to cause them any more trouble.
One had to train for seven years before they were allowed to fly a training Shebalve at the acadamy, and it wasn`t easy to figure out which of the controls did what... especially when Bullet still hung onto the flying aircraft with one arm that was slowly, but surely getting tired.
The second shebalve in the air, ready to drop reinforcements, noticed her and was coming her way... barely in time, she set an auto piloted course for it and jumped off, falling onto a balcony underneath.
The last thing she saw before blacking out was a bright flash, followed by an earthshaking explosion in the brightest of colors when the expensive, seithr powered aircraft collided and tore themselves to pieces.
Then she gave in to the pain and let go.
Ragna whistles in appreciation as he hops off the side of the building onto a buttress, then to the ground. The lieutenant that had escaped him is setting up for another shot at Bulelt as she hangs from the Shebalve; he notices Ragna too late as the Reaper charges towards him, and Hell's Fang lashes out to crush his ribcage. The following swathe of dark energy turns him into gibbets, and Ragna turns back to his allies, bounding up the outer wall of the hotel using Bloodscythe as a piton.
"Bullet, that was fuckin' sweet." he calls, flipping up over the ledge of the balcony and extracting Bloodscythe from the wall with a groan of shredded concrete. "Did you - oh." Ragna frowns. "Well why the hell did you puss out, woman."
He shrugs and lifts the mercenary into a fireman's carry, and hefts her down the stairwell again and back to their room, where he calls out, "Caelica, you still here? Time to get moving! I don't want to wait for another ambush."
"Coming, coming!" Caelica shouted, still a bit shaken by the massive explosion just outside the hotel.
"What the hell was that, anyway?! Sounded like a bomb going off or something!" Soon enough, she came running along dressed in her shoes and a long, oversized T-shirt- in her hands was a laundry basket full of their clothes, as she made sure not to leave them behind.
Her face paled significantly when she noticed the hole in Ragna`s shoulder and the various burns and wounds on Bullet, along with the broken ribs she probably had from the fall.
"I`ll... i`ll get right to it..." She stuttered, ripped out of her joyous cycle by the death surrounding her and her bleeding friends in front of her.
Caelica was a pacifist by nature, she only fought to defend herself and if possible, she healed her opponents after they learned their lesson... but most of these people needed more healing power than she could ever offer- she didn`t have the ability to resurrect the dead.
Ragna grins a little as Cae begins fluttering, healing Ars already aglow on her fingertips. "Get Bullet first, she's down for the count, might as well heal her while she's still for it." he says. "I'll manage - wound's already closing anyways. The Grimoire's good for little stuff like this." It was true enough - the souls he'd harvested with Bloodscythe had already begun patching the hole in his shoulder, flesh stitching together grotesquely. "Sorry to ruin your morning, anyways."
He turns and grabs up the laundry basket on his other shoulder, and starts walking as he talks, letting Caelica work her magic on Bullet. "It was an ambush squad of NOL soldiers. Guess the clerk figured out who I was. And that using gold dust to buy a room wasn't exactly inconspicuous." Ragna chuckles awkwardly. "Aw well. Those two Shebalves were probably their entire air complement, so we've got a good five minutes before anyone else shows up. Let's book it to the railway."
"Alright..." Caelica said quietly, her hand resting on Bullet to let her magic flow into her. She starts moving along with Ragna- neither of them wants to stay much longer anymore, despite the comfy bed and the well stacked wine cooler- getting herself used to the idea of riding in that stupid rail car a second time.
Bullet was gravely injuried, without treatment she might`ve died during the next hour. However, Caelica couldn`t use both of her hands on Bullet without slowing Ragna down, so the process of healing her took a while.
This whole time, she said nothing, quietly glooming about the carnage that took place after such a peaceful and enjoyable evening...
Quietly, she began to talk again.
"Just who are they... those NOL people..?"
Ragna shrugs. "The NOL - stands for Novis Orbus Librarium - regulates and controls all use of magic these days, and most everything else too. They're real assholes about it. I've knocked off a couple branches because their management is full of people like Relius Clover and Terumi, and no one benefits with crazies like those in charge." He grimaces. "They've got some kind of huge bounty on my head. Dunno how much it's at, but it's enough to bankrupt the government if I ever do get caught."
He carries Bullet up a set of stairs in the outdoors station, ignoring the stares of the citizens as they make way for the bloody fighter. "We're hijacking a regular carriage this time, by the by." Ragna calls back to Caelica, as he boots the turnstile halfway across the station floor and steps over the wreckage. "Fuck that counterweight. Not again. Not with Bullet out of commission like this, the ride wouldn't help her at all."
The Reaper makes it to a stationary traincar, and its doors slide open - only for him to pause and frown thoughtfully.
"Oh!" A squirrel-tailed beastkin says, jerking up from where she'd been crouched over her cellphone. She blinks at Ragna then grins happily. "Hey, Ragsy! Whatcha doing out here? Disturbing the public peace again?"