Episode 39: The Pains of Youth
Phoenix Fire Guildhall | Nadine's Office
A familiar head of black hair pokes its head out from behind Cooley's legs, innocent brown eyes looking at Mana curiously.
"A-Akane?" Nadine blinks.
Young Akane Kumiko turns her attention to Nadine and narrows her eyes suspiciously. "How d'you know my name?" she asks. "I don't know you. Mommy always says to beware of strangers," Akane's eyes drift towards Mana again, a concerned look on her face. "But…"
Nadine follows her gaze and gets an idea. "Ah! Yes," she says. "Mana here is feeling a bit…frightened." Nadine says, looking pointedly at Cooley.
"R-Right." Cooley nods, taking the hint and swiftly leaving the room after taking one more look at Mana. "No Mary…"
Akane tilts her head to the side as she observes Mana. "Scared of what?" she asks, turning to Nadine. "For strangers, you all seem like nice people."
Nadine smiles sadly. "Unfortunately, she has quite a lot to be scared of." she says in a quieter voice. "Would you mind talking to her for me?"
Akane looks at Mana again, who seems to have calmed down ever so slightly now that Cooley has left the room. Akane walks up to Mana and offers her a friendly smile. "Hi there. You don't have to be scared of me."
Mana doesn't respond, instead looking distrustfully at Akane.
"I'm Akane." Akane introduces herself, unperturbed by Mana's silence. "That lady over there says you're Mana."
Mana tenses for a moment before nodding in confirmation.
Akane hums and smiles again. "I don't know what you're scared of but you can count on me!" she says, putting a hand over her heart. "I'll protect you!"
Mana doesn't look like she believes a word Akane says.
Still, Akane doesn't give up.
She sits next to Mana and shows her the palm of her hand, a look of concentration on her face before a small, carefully maintained flame appears in her hand. Akane beams proudly. "See? I can do the same Fire Magic as my Daddy and he's suuuuper strong!" she says as she makes the flame dance around and between her fingers, fascinating Mana. "So I can protect you!"
Nadine frowns at the tidbit of information about Akane's father.
Mana looks back at Akane when she closes her fist and snuffs out the flame. "You'll…protect me? You won't leave me?" she asks in a soft voice.
"Leave you? Why would I leave you when I'm supposed to be protecting you?" Akane asks with a confused frown.
Mana winces, pulling her knees even closer to her chest. "My big brother…h-he's only a few minutes older than me b-but he said since he was the o-oldest that it was his - that it was his responsibility to p-protect us." she says, her eyes filling with fresh tears again. "I haven't - I haven't seen him in s-so long…I haven't seen any of them in…" Mana clutches her head, squeezing her eyes shut. "I can't - I can't remember - I keep forgetting-" she stammers, frustrated. "Th-They keep doing stuff to my head-"
"It's okay. You don't have to remember right now." Akane says, carefully taking Mana's hands off her head and holding them in her own. Mana looks like she wants to pull away but she refrains. "I'll protect you, okay? I promise." she says with a kind smile. "That way you can have all the time you need to remember in peace!"
"...Promise?"
Akane nods. "I promise!" she repeats with a sincere smile.
Before either of them can say anything else, someone throws open the door to Nadine's office and Mana immediately screams and clings onto Akane's arm.
Nadine sighs once more and mutters something about needing to get a lock for her door.
"Veiss! I told you to open it carefully!"
"But then I can't make an entrance!"
"Emile." Nadine says, exasperated. "What - Veiss?"
Blond baby Veiss looks at Nadine curiously, a book in one of his hands. "Why does everyone here know my name?" he asks. Then, he points at Mana with his free hand. "And what's wrong with her, I thought you were the good guys!" Veiss says with a frown.
Mana flinches and pulls herself closer to Akane.
"They are the good guys!" Akane retorts and points at Nadine. "She's been nothing but nice! Like a grandma!"
Nadine sighs.
Veiss crosses his arms. "And who're you supposed to be? Their mascot?" he sneers and sticks his tongue out at Akane.
"Isn't their mascot a bird…?" Mana wonders quietly. "Ph-Phoenixes are birds…right?"
"Yeah!" Akane says and turns her finger towards Veiss. "Their mascot is a bird!"
Emile sighs and gently pushes Veiss towards Mana and Akane. "Go on," he encourages.
Veiss holds out the leatherbound book in his hand towards Mana. He smiles. "Here. I'm Veiss. I don't know why but this should make you feel a little bit better."
Mana looks at Veiss cautiously before slowly taking the offered book. Finding nothing written on the cover or the spine, she undoes its clasp and opens the book to its first page. She frowns. "...X793?" she mumbles to herself. "'I've been with Phoenix Fire for a little over a week now.'" Mana reads quietly and her frown deepens. "This…Th-This is my handwriting…but…the year doesn't make any sense. I-I don't - I don't remember a lot but I know it can't have been that long since…" she winces.
Akane and Veiss match her frown. "Yeah, that doesn't make any sense." Veiss agrees. "I'd be a big kid by then!" he says.
"And…I wrote a-about Akane and V-Veiss?" Mana wonders, continuing to read. Her eyes widen. "Mary…and Mary's dad? So that wasn't…" she trails off, mumbling.
Emile quickly bends down to Mana's height to grab her attention before she can get to the part about Calypso. "So you see you have nothing to be afraid of here, okay?" he says kindly.
Mana hands the books back to him and scooches back into her corner. She doesn't say anything for a moment.
"I'm Emile. You read my name in here too, right?" Emile continues, introducing himself.
Mana nods slowly. "You…You're my friend too?" she asks.
Emile beams. "That's right! You, me, Akane, and Veiss here are all friends…and the same age." he says with a small, awkward laugh. "Something happened that turned the three of you and another girl downstairs back into children." Emile explains and holds out a hand. "Me and our other friends downstairs will protect all four of you until you're back to normal. Do you trust me?"
Akane nods to herself. "I guess…that makes sense." she says. "I wouldn't leave my mom or dad."
Emile and Nadine wince.
Veiss looks down at his hands. "Does that mean I'm a part of Phoenix Fire too?" he wonders and gasps excitedly. "Do I have Magic!?"
Emile and Nadine wince again.
Mana looks at Emile wearily. "L-Lady Yutsuko isn't here?" she asks.
Emile's expression softens. "No, she's not." he confirms.
Mana looks down at his hand. "...Can I take a shower?"
Emile glances at Nadine. "Well, about that…"
"Our water and sewage systems are under maintenance right now." Nadine steps in. "However, I think you might like to have your wounds cleaned before taking a shower anyway, hm?." she says. "What do you say? We have an infirmary downstairs so you don't even have to go far."
"Yeah!" Emile says. "Come on, I'll take you."
Mana hesitates one more time before taking Emile's hand.
Phoenix Fire Guildhall | Infirmary
After bursting into tears at the sight of Acro on their way to the infirmary, Mana sits on one of the beds fully bandaged and silently watches Akane and Veiss poke around the infirmary.
"What do you want us to do, Master?" Danate asks as he steps into the room and ushers Rina in to go mingle with the other children.
Nadine frowns, thinking. "You didn't recognize who put it into the water supply?" she asks, turning her head towards Coraline.
Coraline shakes her head.
Nadine sighs. "If it truly was that woman, we can't leave them unsupervised." she says quietly. "Especially her." Nadine says, watching as Rina introduces herself to an anxious Mana. "Emile, Genesis, Madelaine, and Acro will stay here and guard them - they're the least likely to freak Mana out." she says.
Danate pouts.
"I don't want that look from the guy who's just as bandaged as she is right now." Nadine says dryly and turns to leave the infirmary. "Coraline, Eira should still be in town, she and Akito are staying at the hotel. Inform them to stay on their guard." she orders and looks at Danate. "The rest of you, with me."
Somewhere in Zaflior…
"All done!" Calypso says cheerfully as she skips towards her companion. "It really helps that I was in that place for weeks, finding their utilities was super easy. I'll be heading back to the guild now," she says. "Have fun~!"
Her companion smiles. "Let's have some fun, hm?"
Phoenix Fire Guildhall
With the whole of the guild out to make sure one of the most evil people in the country isn't in their town, the eight Phoenix Fire Mages left behind have the run of the building to themselves. They're hanging around the second floor of the guild, the older four doing their best to entertain the kids.
Akane looks down at the space between her and Mana when the girl starts squeezing her hand in the middle of Acro defending one of his paintings from Madelaine. She looks back at Mana's face and frowns worriedly when she sees the utterly terrified look on her face.
Akane wasn't the only one who noticed.
"Mana?" Emile calls. "What's wrong?"
Mana squeezes Akane's hand tighter. "She's here." she says in a voice almost too quiet to hear.
Emile's eyes widen.
Mana turns on her heel. "I'm going to take a shower." she says and heads towards the girl's dorms. Mana freezes in place for a moment, going rigid.
Emile frowns. "Mana?" he calls.
Mana turns around slowly, all the color drained from her face. "I'm…I'm fine. I thought…" she shakes her head and turns back around. "I'm just tired…you're just tired…she's not…" Mana mumbles to herself as she resumes walking with much less energy than she had before.
Her teammates exchange a concerned look and mentally file away the interaction for later.
"Is something wrong?" Rina asks, nervous.
Emile gives Acro and Madelaine a look.
Madelaine kneels down to Rina's height and smiles. "Nothing that we can't handle." she says and takes Rina's hands in hers. "Come on," Madelaine says, looking at each of the kids. "Let's go stay on the third floor for a bit. Do you want to see what kind of magic Acro and I can do?" she asks, looking at Veiss in particular.
Acro gives the kids a grin that almost falters, unable to hide his nerves as well as Madelaine. "Yeah! We're pretty strong-" he pauses for a second, thinking. "I wonder what acid does to clay…"
While the two of them are distracting the kids, Emile turns to Genesis who's already typing away on his Archive. "Nothing yet." Genesis mumbles, concentrating. "I already put a lock on every door and window. If she is here, she has to come in through the walls."
Zaflior
"My, my, my, I promised myself I wouldn't take any detours but this is just too good."
Cooley turns towards the sound of the unfamiliar voice. "Heh?" he blinks, confused when he comes face to face with an unfamiliar cloaked woman. "Do I know you?"
The woman smiles and Cooley finds something horribly off about it. "No…" she says and raises her hand out in front of her. "But I know your daughter."
Cooley's eyes widen and faster than Cooley can react, blood streams forth from behind the woman's cloak and splits off to take the shape of flower petals. "Blood Blossom." she casts and the razor sharp blood petals fly forward, cutting Cooley's arms when he puts them up to protect himself.
"Shit! Who the hell are you?!" Cooley demands, discreetly and quickly swiping his hand over the barrel of the revolver strapped to his thigh as the blood petals continue to assault him.
The woman coos. "Aw, still haven't figured it out yet? And here I thought Finn was stupid." she laughs and reaches for her other thigh. "Tell me, do you scream as sweetly as Mary does~?"
Cooley nearly bursts a blood vessel trying to keep his cool. He draws the revolver from his thigh, the design along the barrel glowing a light brown, and fires at the woman. "Mass Drive!"
A dense, piercing bullet of raw magic energy is shot at the woman and she swiftly pulls out a sword from behind the other side of her cloak, using the flat of the blade to brace herself against the extreme pressure of the bullet. It pushes her back about a foot but the woman's stance doesn't falter. "Ooh~ I confess, you're much stronger than your brother but I'm already familiar with all of his techniques." she says and parries the bullet back at Cooley when its pressure lightens up enough. "Twins who specialize in the same magic…" the woman shivers. "How I would love to get my hands on you."
"Not a chance in hell, woman." Cooley sneers and holsters his revolver. "You're buddies with my brother, you hurt Mary…" he cracks his knuckles. "I'll kill you with my bare hands."
The woman laughs again and flourishes her sword before pointing it at Cooley. "I'd like to see you try, Brown Bull. I'll take both of you home with me as well - that'll teach Manami a lesson for running away from me." she says and raises one of her arms straight above her head.
Cooley frowns but doesn't let his guard down. "Both?"
"Blood Shield!"
A large twister of darkness and shadow suddenly shoots down right over the woman and meets the blood shield now protecting her.
Zaflior | Purewaters Inn
"...and that's how it is." Coraline finishes. "So any assistance would be-"
"What in the world is that?" Eira gasps, pointing at the window behind Nadine. Akito's eyes widen in mild interest, watching the same thing as Eira.
Coraline turns around to find a massive pillar of black in the distance. "Oh. That's Danate."
Zaflior
A Danate also drops down onto the shield when the twister of darkness disappears: "Darkness Devil's Reap!" a giant grim reaper-like scythe of darkness appears in his hands. He swings it lower than the woman's shield, hooking her arm before using the momentum to toss her up into the air. "Cooley!" Danate shouts.
Cooley draws the magic lever-action shotgun from his back, swiping his hand along the barrel before aiming it at the woman. The design on it glows red with heat. "Firestorm Rounds!" Cooley casts and fires the shotgun, several slugs barreling towards the woman.
The woman looks unperturbed by their teamwork. She merely smiles and calls forth more blood from the hidden vials on her thigh, using the stream to slash through the slugs and they explode when she does. The woman moves the blood back into its tube and lands on her feet a few feet away from the pair. She curtsies and bows her head, "Danate Lunith, what an honor to meet you." the woman says and looks up, a cruel look in her eyes. "Your friend Iago was a bit of an inspiration of mine as a child. You could even say that he's the reason I am who I am today."
Danate's harsh expression falters. "Wh-What?"
The woman stands up straight and pouts mockingly. "Oh? I know you were a bit young when you left but have you really been gone so long that you can't recognize a countryman when you see one?" she asks with a smile.
"Y-You…" Danate pales.
Cooley looks at Danate with a frown. "Danate…?"
The woman smiles again. "Yutsuko Usagi, born and raised in Ambrosia." she says, putting a hand over her heart as she walks towards Danate. "Have you heard about His Majesty recently? I heard he isn't doing too well."
Danate drops the scythe in his hands, a shaken look on his face.
"My, my," Yutsuko says, circling Danate like a vulture. "I would love to get my hands on you as well but I have a disobedient toy to retrieve and a Wizard Saint to avoid." she says and stabs Danate in his thigh, making him crumple to the ground. "I won't kill you…I'm so interested to see what your next move is once I'm done here." she says and moves behind Danate, lifting him up by the scruff of his jacket and using him as a human shield. "I'd think twice about that, Cooley Brown."
Cooley grits his teeth and the light brown aura around him disappears.
Yutsuko smiles. "I told you already, I'm already very familiar with your brother's techniques." she says and tosses Danate at him.
When Cooley catches him and looks back up, the smile is gone from Yutsuko's face and her expression is replaced by a mixture of annoyance and surprise.
Yutsuko frowns, tucking her sidelocks behind her ear to reveal a small burn on her cheek. She runs her fingers along the burn and her frown deepens. Yutsuko's eyes widen slightly and she jumps back without warning. Not even a second later does a long spear made of fire pierce the ground where she once stood.
Yutsuko furrows her brow. "Tsk. Is this a warning, Nadine Septim?" she sneers. "You can't keep me from that girl forever. She's mine."
Nadine appears in between Yutsuko and the Phoenix Fire men in a flash of fire. She makes a beckoning motion toward the spear and it dislodges itself from the ground, flying back into Nadine's hand. "I'm giving you the opportunity to leave with nothing more than a flesh wound. It seems like you know that's what's best for you if you were trying to avoid me." Nadine says dryly, making the woman scowl slightly. "You've only taken out Danate. There's three other S-Class Mages in town and one of them is watching you right now." she says casually and tilts her head to the side. "And I'm not talking about Cooley."
Phoenix Fire Guildhall
Genesis waves lazily at the screen displaying the four Mages. "Yoohoo." he says and continues typing, zooming on Danate's leg. "She didn't hit anything vital and the wound isn't too deep. He'll be fine in a few days." Genesis says to himself, reading off the analysis from his Archive. "I - well that's creepy." he says when Yutsuko looks directly at his hidden Archive screen.
"Genesis Adrestia." Yutsuko hums. "But who else is here, I wonder? Caia Orstead and Myling Alva are still holed up in Honeywell, and so is your mother." she thinks aloud. "Could it be that girl from Aberrant Hydra or that boy from Silver Sabelum? I don't know, I could care less about them. You people have my toy so you people are my targets." she says and points her sword at Genesis' screen. "You can't hide with them forever, Manami. We'll be together again, just you wait…" she says with a creepy smile and melts into a pool of blood that seeps between the cracks of the street and disappears.
Genesis whips around, gasping when he sees a trembling Mana standing behind him, hand-in-hand with Akane and Rina.
"...Shit."
Akane points up at the third floor. "Acro accidentally gave Madelaine and Emile a concussion doing a move Veiss told him to." she says and frowns. "Emile can't protect us if he's unconscious. Is that lady going to hurt us?" Akane asks bluntly.
Mana looks like she's seconds away from bursting into tears. "Th-That - Lady Yutsuko - if she's - if sh-she's bigger that means she's stronger, r-right?" she stammers.
Rina, for her part, is doing ever so slightly better than Mana. "Is she c-coming here?" she asks.
"Erm…" Genesis scratches the back of his head.
He has no idea what to say to them. He and Carson still had their parents when they were growing up so things like this were left to them.
It won't hurt to be blunt, right? Grown up Mana seems to like grown up Akane's bluntness, maybe little Mana will too.
Genesis points at each of the girls as he answers their questions: "No, yes, no." he answers in the order they were asked. "She left." Genesis adds when he sees Mana's doubtful look. "The tracker I gave Danate is out of range now." he says and pulls up another Archive screen. "See?"
The girls watch the screen intently, silent for a beat, and then they scream.
Genesis frowns and looks back at his screen. "Why are you - what the hell?"
The outskirts of Zaflior…
Yutsuko skips back into the bounds of Zaflior "Oops, almost forgot my ~" she hums, heading back to her campsite.
Phoenix Fire Guildhall
Ken Sevens and Marcus Bartlett look at Genesis disapprovingly when they return to see the four kids sitting around him and clinging onto each other, sobbing.
"The hell's wrong with you, dude?" Marcus glares at him. "They're just kids."
Ken frowns. "Very unbecoming of you, Mister Genesis. I'll be sure to let your sister know about this." he says with a disappointed sigh.
Genesis puts his head in his hands, groaning. "It's not like that!" he cries.
When Acro trudges out of the infirmary with a disoriented Emile and Madelaine leaning on either of his shoulders, the men look at him with an even harsher look.
"THAT ONE WASN'T MY FAULT!"
PF x SS x AH
A/N yes this was a bit rushed at the end bc it started storming and i was afraid for my wifi
hit the slay button