Black glass echoed the cadence of Ichigo's steps down the hallway. He ran his fingers down the left side. Tapped it every few seconds. Hollow. Or there was something beyond it. The uncertainty stoked his imagination. Top-secret storage closets? Hidden halls that intersected the one he walked? Or maybe it was all much bigger than he knew, and the walls hid the full scale of a colossal subterranean cavern. But what lay in front of him intrigued him more; a sliver of blinding light, and the roar of some mechanical giant deeper within.
The sliver spread to a rectangle, then a square, then a doorway bathing him in blinding light and deafening noise. Ichigo saw its source, but still didn't recognize the machine before him. One cylindrical bank, about twenty feet around but only chest high. A touch screen faced the doorway, and a galaxy of buttons glowing beneath it. A smooth white material stacked above that– either glass, or some strange tempered plastic that gave off the ubiquitous white glow. It rose a dozen feet before another steel cylinder encased the upper edge. The whole structure funneled up above that, until it met a high ceiling that reflected the light as the Moon reflects the Sun.
It looked like a massive storage tank, if he could approximate it to anything he'd seen before.
The glowing enigma gave Ichigo pause, and he flinched when he realized a shadow had peeled from the wall to his side. Tailored suit and white gloves, slicked back silver hair, and a beaked gas mask. A pair of tentacles trailed from his underarms, unfurled from his waist.
"You finally made it," Kraken welcomed.
"Y-Yeah," was all Ichigo could muster. He toyed with the frame of his glasses. Looked at the machine, and back to Kraken.
"Tell me," the faunus said, and he stepped closer. "What do you think you're looking at right now?"
Ichigo shook his head. "I don't know," he admitted. "It's not the server room, that's for sure." His eyes re-emerged from the glow on his lenses, revealing his look of apprehension. "What is this?"
"You've probably gathered there's more to Frontline Biomedical than they would lead you to believe. Healthcare, security, this entire gods-damned city, all the tip of the proverbial iceberg," Kraken declared. "Behind the scenes, Griswold Baine has been working on the quantification of the human soul. And, in the last few years, he's succeeded." He stepped ahead and spread his arms, a crucified silhouette before the light of the machine. "What you're looking at right now is the nexus of The Apoptosis Project; the future prison of our collective consciousness."
"Collective consciousness…" Ichigo marveled. His murmur was barely audible over the mechanical drone. "This is insane."
"I'm glad we can agree. Our goal today wasn't to destroy Frontline's servers. Or burn Empyrean Tower to the ground." He held up a custom-model Holoband, and the progress bar upon it blinked closer to completion. "Once this gets out, we won't have to."
"I…" Ichigo stammered. "I won't stop you."
A flash of light. Not from the machine, from behind. Kraken whipped forward with an abrupt grunt, and his cough flooded his mask with blood. A spear of hard light stuck from the small of his back, crimson evaporating off the spearhead sticking a foot past his navel. Another flash, another spear. Two more.
Kraken's shaking arm tapped a node strapped at his hip, and a mosquito-pitch shriek mounted within the chamber. It burst outward, hardly audible and almost visible, as a shockwave that pricked up the hairs on Ichigo's neck.
Ichigo swiveled, saw four androids sprawled and bathed in white. Beyond the doorway, the walls of the hall had opened. Dozens, hundreds of Organds that piled out all lay in a single extended heap.
If he was lucky, he'd get a full minute.
"Run, kid," Kraken choked. On his knees, he unstrapped his Holoband. "...Finish my work."
Ichigo leapt between still androids down the hall, up the stairs, steps fast but careful enough to catch if any perked up in a sudden return to animation. His gasps for breath came through a grin when he saw Laurel and Snow where he left them, as if all that happened below was a hallucination, a nightmare.
"We need to GO," Ichigo demanded, pounding past them. But Snow stopped him.
"What happened down there?"
"Androids. Lots of them, and they'll come for us. Come on!"
"And Kraken?" Laurel chimed in.
Ichigo freed himself from Snow's grip. "Dead. They killed him."
"Shit."
Snow took the lead. "Then yes, running is a good idea. I'd rather not follow Kraken's example."
The last image of The Ambassador, before the Line pulled back up into the sunlight and they left him below, wouldn't leave Lazula's mind. The golden hair spilling out from a cracked helmet. The whirling, fluid, maelstrom of strikes sparking with lightning. It was all too familiar. The thought she didn't want to believe weighed down her shield, and slowed her blade. So much so that Crescent Talon buried in her stomach with the force of a Deathstalker's claw and launched her halfway down the Line car.
She would have flown further, but Aegis caught on a row of seats and she flipped to her hands and knees. Her head whipped up to Condor, but something on the left fringe of her vision pulled her attention. A girl. No more than fourteen or fifteen. Cowering between the seats, the backpack pulled over her head her only armor. A canine tail bristled and tucked between her legs, and from beneath a mess of dark curls, wide eyes. Horrified and helpless.
"Shit," Lazula spat. She took a falling guillotine blade into Aegis, and with all its force magnified shoved Condor back. She mounted another offensive– this one subdued and measured, with quarter-strikes and a fencer's lunges working at Condor between empty seats. She took a blade down her side, another dangerously close to her neck that hooked her into a blunt strike. But even then her semblance surged into her blade, surged into her boots. With each step she forced, they drew toward the gap left by The Ambassador.
And finally they broke into the charred clearing, between twisted steel, melted plastic, and smoldering fabric. They were back in the sky, a hundred feet or two above the city. Wind whipped through Lazula's hair, and the smoke upon it stung her eyes. But her blade was free, and swung with unrestrained fury. Six slashes in a row met steel but she kept pushing. Condor answered her last with a flip of his haft, and Impetus left a cleft in the floor. He slammed her jaw with the edge of his weapon, and she lost a few feet of progress. She regained her footing and held Aegis steady against the lunge that followed.
She took a deep breath. All was quiet for a second, all was still. Aura coursed down her arms, into her palms and through each curled finger. It broke the final barrier, spread into Impetus's hilt and into her blade. A rainbow of aura rippled upon Aegis like the ocean's surface. Her renewed onslaught was too much for even Condor, and at the precipice she plunged her blade into its sheath. She clutched Crescent Talon in one hand, the other grasped his coat, and she drove forward until nothing but the wind held them.
They barreled four stories down, toward the balcony bar Lazula decided as their target. Glass tables exploded and chairs flung two dozen feet to each side. Their auras flashed and tangled in the impact, black and a rainbow haze filling the scars left as they bounced, rolled, skidded to a stop.
Inhuman or superhuman, both stood once more. Lazula's left hip felt weak. She felt the echoes of Condor's blade in her stomach and her jaw, and the beginnings of a headache began to take hold. Her entire back would be one giant bruise if she lived to see the next morning. Condor was slower to catch his breath too, and as he stepped forward Lazula noticed a limp. He tried to pass his grimace off as a smile.
"I can see it in your eyes, Miss Skye. You're enjoying this, aren't you?"
Lazula's eyebrows stitched, and she charged again.
Black steel shifted, and bullets rattled Aegis on her approach. She took their impact, felt the energy in her arm and guided it down her legs to aid her steps. She put all of herself into one swing, but found it blocked by the flat edge of his gun. The second as well. He swept her third aside and she pulled into a defensive against the sparks that seared her cheeks as Crescent Talon gashed her shield. Condor leapt into the air in a burst of shadow, his wings spread, and his scythe whirled to bear down upon her again.
It nearly crushed her.
A black haze had begun to rise from Condor's form, and his next seven strikes came even faster, hit even harder, forced her to her back foot with each blow. He twirled Crescent Talon above his head, a tornado of shadow and steel, and it screamed toward her again. She felt something shift in her shoulder. She grit her teeth, and heaved Impetus with all the strength in her body, all the force of her semblance, all the trapped rage harbored by the souls within her. She met steel at first but pushed forward, drove until her blade marked flesh and Condor flung backward on an explosion of energy. Tables and chairs launched off the precipice, as if carried away by an invisible tsunami. She'd pay the damages later.
Condor rode it too, and for a second Lazula thought he'd clear the balcony's edge. But his wings spread, he slowed, and he landed on two feet. Again faster than her eyes could register, he was upon her with a strike from her ankle to her shoulder. They continued for another minute, spare jabs and slashes tearing away their dwindling auras. An unexpected score down her leg tore a flash of green from it, and when he knocked her to the ground, whipped Aegis aside and drove Crescent Talon into her stomach, the aura was pink, white, purple. She didn't know how many remained. If anything, she was surprised just how long her aura had held out.
She grabbed his weapon with a bare hand, felt its cold steel on her palm as she wrenched it away to stand once more. Impetus again buried in his gut, and another slash arced from shoulder to hip. But he twirled his weapon, pulling Impetus past him. With a shifting of steel and a burst of shadow he swung. Aegis caught it, and though she felt the energy welling inside her it had nowhere to go.
Her boots left the ground, and she saw the edge escape her.
It, and the blue sky beyond it, drew further out of reach. After the train, after scythe, glaive and dust, after their plummet onto the balcony, she couldn't imagine her aura staving off a twelve-story fall. She wouldn't die without trying. She pulled Aegis in front of her, focused whatever remained of her aura, and tried not to think about Condor gaining four hundred and sixty souls.
Her shadow streaked across the concrete. Behind it, wings spread. Her eyes blinked wider and she swiveled around in the air to see Condor's wings folded, bearing down on her like a falcon upon prey. With an eerie, gleaming fervor beyond dead eyes– the spark of a supernova somewhere deep in a starless night sky– Condor clutched her collar. They slowed. The sudden kindness confused her. Then twenty feet above Downtown, he heaved her into the white concrete hard enough it cracked beneath her.
Dozens of souls' worth of aura exploded from within– green, purple, red, white. The last, circling her body and erupting from the center of her chest, pure gold. She was slow to her knees. Slower to her feet. Aura worked, in part, as a pain suppressant. And now, with hers shattered, the full weight of her fight with Condor wracked her body. Aegis was heavy in her grasp. She had to have been concussed, at least once, and felt on the verge of being sick. Each movement of her right hip and left shoulder felt as though it sparked a flame inside.
Still alive. Their fight wasn't over.
She scanned the area for Condor. But across the white concrete, between designer storefronts and glass archways leading to the opulent lobbies within, she saw nothing. A chunk of stone fell behind her. Her brow furrowed, pushing a bead of sweat into her eye, and she looked up to the source.
Thirty feet above her, clutching the wall with one Grimm hand, Crescent Talon in the other, Condor looked down upon her. His skin had lost what little color it had, and his hair had bleached six inches out from its roots. His eyes again filled with darkness, spreading from his iris like ink soaking through. He had become something no longer human. Something beyond human.
"It seems neither of us has aura to spare, Miss Skye," Condor announced. She felt the depths of his voice in her spine, suppressed the shiver it stirred within her. "And yet, a single misstep, a single twist of the blade away from death, do you not feel the most alive?"
Lazula swallowed. Tightened her grip on Impetus. She knew there was no going back.
"Enjoy it while you can."
A vulture's wings beat, and shadows choked the sky. He became a surge of darkness, and his scythe crashed into Aegis with an immense force only its wielder could have held off. She felt the energy course down her arm and swirl within her, building until it threatened to pull her ribs apart, crush her lungs and her heart. She ducked under a second swing and pivoted to let the force free through Impetus. A half step aside was all Condor needed to correct himself against the force that shattered three stories of windows behind him.
Condor backed off a step, twirling his weapon like a far-oversized baton to free it from Impetus. His momentum reversed and he stepped at Lazula, thrusting the haft of his weapon at her temple. She was faster. Impetus met it and she flung the weapon aside, rammed Condor with Aegis hard enough he stumbled back. He landed on his back, his wings pushed him over, and he was only on all fours for half a second before he became another rush of shadow and steel.
Lazula backed away with a half inch to spare. Black wind ripped through her hair, she heard steel scourge Aegis's face, and her arm felt as if it would tear from her shoulder. She faltered, Condor stopped twenty feet beyond her, and rushed once more. The vicious motion repeated twice– Lazula hardly able to defend herself in time, Condor shredding the pavement as he slowed to a stop, turned, and lunged once more.
Gasping for breaths of sour air, watching Condor grind to a halt again, Lazula renewed her clutch on Aegis's inner handle, and worked her boots to grip the concrete. The cloud of darkness set upon her once more. Condor slammed into her with what felt like the force of the Line train, launching her to her back two dozen feet away. Her vision wobbled from the force of her head smashing the pavement. But she saw Condor's form above her, and the scythe he held at the ready.
She scrambled away from him with a hand and both feet, her other hand raised to shield her. Undignified, but it worked well enough in avoiding frenzied slashes and rakes that shredded concrete. She flung her shield into one of his strikes, channeled most of its energy into her legs and whatever remained into her arms, and sprung backward to her feet some distance away.
He chased her, a hungry crimson glow emerging from within black eyes and a scythe raised to strike. She stepped into his blade this time, put a second hand behind Aegis's gleaming face to steady her shield.
Something shifted beyond it. Like the first misplaced stone to herald a landslide, a single bolt inside Crescent Talon's blade cracked. On Aegis the weapon twisted, screeched and crumpled, and in an explosion of steel only a spring and an aimless hunk of metal attached to the haft. Condor's eyes snapped back into their approximation of normal, and flashed with the closest imitation of life she'd seen stir within them– surprise.
He stumbled back. And as he did, the world slowed. Lazula heard nothing but her heartbeat. No thoughts clouded her mind. Only resolve and instinct drove her. She stepped into him, wrung Impetus's hilt in both hands, and plunged her blade forward.
She felt its tip pierce the layer of enforced kevlar beneath his coat, pierce skin and flesh. It met resistance, but crunched through bone to drive deeper. It halted again before appearing between Condor's wings, its glint dyed velvet in waning sunlight. The remains of Crescent Talon clattered to their side.
A chorus of murmurs filled her mind. She saw cobblestone streets, snow falling from blue skies. Skyscrapers became pine trees, nearly as tall. She shook the image from her mind. She didn't need to hallucinate the blood on her hands anymore, after all. She was a killer.
Her blade still buried in Condor's chest. The feeling of it sinking through flesh and scourging through bone fresh on her palms. Something warm, something thick washed over them. Condor's last breaths came as ragged gurgles. Then a drowned chuckle.
"You're too late, brother."
Lazula pushed Condor from Impetus. He fell aside, yet an arc of blood still connected him to her blade. She turned as they separated, toward the one who approached. The Ambassador's advance slowed until he stood a dozen feet away. On the face of a condo half a block behind him, a holographic Midas held an energy drink, his perfect grin spread seven feet wide.
But in the Ambassador's clothes his eyes were empty. Cold. His golden hair stuck to the blood streaming from his forehead.
Lazula only shook her head.
"You bastard."
A ghost of the smile behind him spread across Midas's lips. It didn't reach his eyes. He pulled another weapon from his waist, a handgun with a narrow barrel a foot and a half long.
"Not wrong."
He fired. Lazula raised Impetus, heard the bullet crash into its face. A silver cord not much wider than fishing line burst forth, wrapped her shield and the arm that held it, then her chest and core. A small node interrupted the cord every couple of inches. She had half a second to wonder what it was before they lit white-hot, and thousands of volts of electricity coursed through her. Her arm was first to lose control. Then her legs, and she fell beside Condor. Her jaw clenched hard enough her teeth might split. She felt the heat of a thousand fires burning inside her muscles, smelled the hair in her nose burning away, then blood.
All went dark.
A few seconds could have passed. A few minutes, or a few hours. But when she came to, Impetus rested ten feet to her side. Aegis still strapped to her other arm, though she hadn't yet regained control of it. The Ambassador– Midas– stood over her. His glaive's blade rested beneath her chin. His eyes flicked to her fingers, straining to regain control against the feeling of molten steel in her veins. He crushed her wrist beneath his boot.
"You're lucky we still need you," he growled. She felt the darkness in Midas's eyes in her core, and she lay on frigid cobblestone. A snowflake landed on her cheek. More bodies lay next to her, ice forming at the edges of velvet pools they bathed in. But instead of the villagers, the souls her body held hostage, Lilly. Caspian. Snow. And more. All those she held dear, slain by her hand. The Ambassador pressed his glaive further beneath her chin. "You didn't see me, did you?"
The blood she spat grazed his cheek. He swiped his blade past her neck, just deep enough she felt warmth spread across it. He made sure to put all of his weight– 193 pounds, according to Academy League records– on her wrist before stowing his weapon and turning away.
She could move her arm again. She felt the blood seeping from her neck, and raised her hand to examine it. She balled her fist.
Below the ship coasting through a fresh night, the City of Vale began returning to life. The lights of homes and high-rises flicked on, one after another. Boards and fences came down, cars roared back to life, apprehensively shifted back into their place in traffic. The CCTS was back online, after the minor hiccup officially labeled emergency downtime to fix a security flaw.
His father's name wasn't the one Caspian cared to see light up his Holoband, but he answered.
"Hello?"
"Hi, Caspian. I just wanted to thank you for today," his father began. It felt strangely out of place, and a sick feeling hit his stomach. Had he heard what happened to Moka? Was he about to deliver bad news? "Thanks to you and your team, we were able to stop the Red Claw's transmission, and set up for the next phase of the plan. Thanks to Moka, Sable is in custody. I've heard back from LSLI. Both Kraken and Condor have been neutralized. That's mission accomplished. Looks like the Red Claw is no more."
"Alright," Caspian replied. He could celebrate later, on the off-chance he felt like it. "Have you heard anything about Moka?"
"No updates, since the medical transport picked her up." The speed at which he changed subjects left a bad taste in Caspian's mouth. "But for the rest of you, I've made arrangements at the Vale Premier Inn and Suites for the next two–"
"INCOMING CALL: MOKA" displayed at the top of his screen. He hung up.
Her hair looked ragged, and drenched in sweat. Bandages wrapped her neck, and continued toward her right shoulder beneath lavender scrubs. Her skin was pale, and dark circles took hold beneath bleary eyes that still echoed her smile. She was beautiful.
"Hey Cas," she weakly greeted. "My nurse like, just stepped out, so I can't talk for long. But I wanted to check in. I'm gonna be okay."
As soon as LSLI's airship touched down back at Sentinel, they fractured. Ichigo, without a word, ran off toward Madrona Hall. A group of Organds ushered Lazula off to the infirmary, despite her protests. The androids onboard the airship had already administered first aid, and the cut on her neck had all but stopped bleeding. All she wanted was to get back to the comfort of her own home, soak in her hot tub and disappear beneath her bed covers for a day or two– "abundance of caution" be damned.
Only Snow and Laurel were left under the light of the airship pad.
"Damn. That made me hungry," the faunus noted. "Wanna hit up The Roots?"
"As an android, you probably know I don't need to eat," Snow said. "But I would enjoy the company."
The pair walked up the road framing campus, a long but direct route between the airship docks to the South and the dormitory buildings nestled together in the Northeast corner. The night had come in full, and as campus was just waking up from a full lockdown, only the streetlights guided their path. A handful of androids were the only ones outside. They would question the pair, Laurel would retort she was coming back from ending the campus lockdown, and they would be sent on their way. The same interaction played out four times over before they made their way inside. The Roots was nearly as quiet.
"You looked pretty freaked out down there," Laurel recalled, leaning back and looking out the window. Empyrean Tower loomed over the bay, its shell stark white against the night. "Anything you wanted to talk about?"
Snow scanned the area. Two men sat six tables down. A student employee cleaned off a table toward the opposite wall. She lowered her voice. "That was where I came from. And where they tested me."
Laurel picked at her plate. "Bad memories, huh? Sorry we had to go down there." She chuckled. "Honestly, that place gave me the creeps, too. It was too… sterile. Too perfect."
Snow nodded. "And I suppose it was a reminder, as well."
The faunus held her glass a few inches from her lips. "A reminder?"
"Yes. A reminder of those unpleasant moments. And a reminder of what's to come."
Lazula's hair fanned out on the surface of the water rolling behind her back. She closed her eyes, took in the steam rising from the Skye Manor's private spa, and breathed out. She could already feel the reminder of her fight with Condor. Usually her injuries would at least have the common courtesy to wait until the next morning. But her neck was stiff, her hip and shoulder ached, and her back had already begun turning black and blue.
But she was alive.
She was alive, her friends were alive, and while the official death toll hadn't been tallied yet, the drip-feed of information told her it was lower than expected. Moka, apparently, had been badly injured. But she was stable according to Lilly.
She wondered just how much was at stake. Had she died, and Condor took her souls, what would have happened then? The water was hot upon her skin, but still she felt a chill down her spine. She didn't have to ponder it. She'd already washed the blood from her hands.
Condor– the first son of Griswold Baine. Dead to the world ten years ago, and he finally caught up. Condor was the Red Claw. And with his death, Lazula knew with confidence that it, too, was no more. The threat had passed. But with it gone, another had taken its place. Midas Baine, the other side of that wretched coin. She wanted to kick herself for not realizing sooner. But could she have known? Could anyone have known?
Condor's words echoed in her mind. "You'll soon find there are very few you can truly trust." He was right about that, too. Midas, her friend, captain of the Sparring Team, icon of the Academy Leagues. Everything about him was a lie. She wondered how much more Frontline was hiding. Maybe she'd ask Ichigo. Her father may know too, but she wasn't sure she could truly trust him, either.
She took another breath, and sunk deeper into the water.
Hey all, going on a brief hiatus after this one. We're coming up on the final stretch to the end of my story (don't worry, there's probably still another good 20 chapters) and I want to be sure I have everything in order for the last couple arcs. It's going to be worth the wait, trust me. And until then, if y'all could leave reviews (and follow Caspian-Skye on tum/blr for bonus content, that would be pretty dope)