11:00 am, in the Observation Area,
"I really don't like this."
Theresa stared down into the arena, where the battle of superpowers played out before her. At times, the blows thrown were enough to shake the building, even when colliding with empty air. It wasn't the forces being thrown around, however, that made Theresa nervous about the ongoing battle, but the reasoning as to why.
"Why did Grandpa decide to agree to a fight?" she whispered to herself, as the building shook when Durandal's fist missed hitting Phillip once more. "There isn't anything here that he could gain by doing this, right?
"Oh dear, mumbling to yourself is rather unbecoming, Madam Theresa."
Theresa nearly jumped at the voice and spun around to address the speaker. "Rita! Don't scare me like that!"
Rita giggled at the request, covering her mouth with one gloved hand as she did. "Sorry, Madam Theresa. I didn't mean to startle you out of your musings. However, I heard you wondering why the Overseer sanctioned this fight."
Theresa cursed the S-rank's meticulous nature and incredible hearing and distracted herself with the fighting below her. Rita seemed even more amused by the reaction and stepped forward to situate herself beside the principal.
"The Overseer received word about the boy's capabilities from Sakura-san," Rita stated, keeping a relatively relaxed expression as she watched Phillip slip around another one of Durandal's attacks. "He had been interested in seeing them in action, so the request was an easy excuse for him to achieve this goal."
Theresa frowned at this and shot a sideways glance at her grandfather. "I knew I shouldn't have agreed to take her in."
"Regardless of the situation, the current fight has been rather underwhelming," Rita said, a frown gracing her face as she continued her observations. "Sakura detailed a rather extreme increase of power with certain stances, but we haven't seen them yet."
"It's nothing," Theresa stated plainly but cursed inwardly. The more intelligence Otto had on her student, the more Theresa questioned how much he had on the rest of them. She didn't need him with her planned exclusion from Schicksal within the coming years.
"Oh, then, could you explain that?"
Theresa clenched her fists as she watched Phillip slip into a stance, the exact one used to open the things he called "the 8 gates." However, given that his appearance didn't change nor did his face twitch from pain, Theresa assumed that he didn't go too far into the gates.
Rita seemed absolutely enthralled with the notion of getting further underneath Theresa's skin but noticed the rather disinterested look Otto had given the scene before him. Taking time to excuse herself from her teasing, Rita walked a couple of meters to return to the Overseer's side.
"Are you finding the fighting less than you desired, Sir?"
"I was expecting something a little more unnatural, I'll admit," Otto expressed, leaning back into the chair he grabbed upon entering the building. "A simple fistfight, however, is something I was both surprised by and completely disappointed with."
"Then, allow me to join the fight," Rita suggested with a bow. "A two-on-one battle may force him to use more unorthodox methods to win." She straightened herself to find that Otto sent her a flat expression in response.
"You understand your role, Rita, and so does Durandal. She'll accomplish her goal, and then so will you. Understand?"
"Understood, sir." Rita forced herself not to show her annoyance at her dismissal on her face, knowing that it wouldn't be welcomed by the Overseer. Instead, she looked back through the window looking into the arena, and waited for the signal for her part to start.
In the crowd of students, several feet away from the teachers,
"Come on, Phillip! Kick her ass!"
"Kiana-chan, language!"
The four girls watched the fight with differing expressions. Kiana chanted and cheered for Phillip while Mei looked on in worry. Bronya and Yuki were the more impassive ones of the group, though Yuna kept an air of interest with the ongoings of the fight. The students around them were just as intrigued with the fight as well, though their cheering was more directed at Durandal over Phillip, which caused Kiana to double her chanting.
"Come on, Mei-senpai! We know he could beat her!"
"Bronya disagrees." All three of them looked back at Bronya with surprise etched on their faces. "From Project Bunny's calculations, Durandal is barely concentrating 25% of her strength right now while Phillip has entered the first of his boosts."
"Well, yeah, but..." Kiana took a second look at the battle to find something that would hold her opinion and spotted something. "He's totally faster than her! I beat he's just wearing her down right now."
"While I'm glad you have such strong beliefs in my host," Gabriel said, causing three of them to jump in surprise, "Bronya is right. Phillip doesn't have the strength to battle her yet."
"B-But Phillip fought those giant Honkai Beasts, though!" Kiana cried out, clearly not convinced someone could beat Phillip at this point. "How could-"
"Kiana-chan, please don't raise your voice," Mei silenced her in a hushed voice. "We're in a crowd, and Gabriel-san isn't here physically."
"Oh, don't worry about that, Raiden Mei," Gabriel replied flippantly. "Just like in Nagazora, they won't know what's going on between the four of us. Besides, most of them are too focused on the fight to care."
Kiana quickly looked around them and saw everyone had their eyes glued to the battle below them. Wondering what had enraptured them so, she took a glance back into the arena and gaped at what she saw. After a few minutes of standing there with her mouth open, Kiana slammed her fist into the window, causing it to shake violently.
"Oi! That's reserved for me and Mei-senpai! Put it back on, ya whore!"
"Language, Kiana-chan," Mei chided, keeping her eyes away from the arena as she could guess what happened. No doubt Phillip had decided to remove his coat once more to face off with the S-rank Valkyrie.
"Oh, and of course she's drinking in the sight," Kiana grumbled, obviously not pleased by the situation. "Go after that Rita chick or something! Stay away from him!"
"I should have lowered the distortion for that," Gabriel said, clearly amused by the outburst. "I'm certain the rest of the crowd would enjoy the shouting."
"Gabriel-san," Mei called, pulling the attention away from the angry Kaslana. "Why do you think Phillip won't win this battle?"
"Oh, I'm confident that he could win this fight if he decided to," Gabriel admitted nonchalantly. "We've simply believed it's best to lay off the higher options of the Eight Gates until his training progresses."
A piece of what Gabriel said caught Mei's attention. "Eight Gates? Is that those power boosts he generates?"
"That's right. You've seen the effects of the seventh gate, and he's been training his resistance to the detrimental effects of them. He can hold the first three for a week before the effects start becoming unbearable."
Mei bent her head to stare at her feet in contemplation. If the number of this power was literal, that means the power-up that put Phillip in the hospital wasn't even the last one he could reach. As she looked back into the arena, watching Phillip manage to land a strong kick that lifted Durandal off the ground and away from him, a pit formed in her stomach.
"What would happen if Phillip-kun needs to use that eighth gate?"
"Death," Gabriel replied plainly. "Even if he had his original level of regeneration, the eighth gate would eventually overtake it and burn him out. Luckily, it's sealed for the time being, but I know when he'll have to use it, and it's not far from now."
The pit in Mei's stomach deepened with this news, and fear gripped her heart as she stared unblinkingly at the arena. To try and shake off the sudden influx of emotions, she looked towards Kiana in hopes of catching a cocky, yet warm smirk that said there was nothing to worry about.
Instead, all Mei saw was the same feeling she had etched on Kiana's face, who met Mei's eyes with a terrified stare. It took a couple of seconds of silent communication between the two of them before they retreated from the window and ran down the hall toward Phillip's preparation room. With the two long gone within a couple of minutes, only Bronya heard Gabriel's sigh.
"It's not that close."
In the arena, as the brawl regressed to a standstill,
"I'm willing to call it quits if you are."
Phillip sat patiently down on top of a sheared-off panel of the wall behind him, caused by one swing of Durandal's weapon that he evaded. Durandal stood a few feet away from him, breathing heavily as she wiped away the sweat from her brow, and covered in bruises while Phillip remained untouched. Apparently, he had one more advantage over the S-ranked Valkyrie, and that came in as stamina. While the lower forms of the Gates lacked the strength to do serious damage, Phillip managed his energy much more fluidly over Durandal.
Durandal looked down at her weapon in her right hand, seemingly to contemplate her next action, but switched to her other hand and decided her choice. "Let's make one last move. Winner takes all."
Phillip sighed at this. Just because he grew used to the effects of the 1st Gate didn't mean the pain had stopped, just that he could power through more effectively. Even now, his muscles requested relief and release from hypertension the gates induced, but his opponent wasn't willing to drop the battle.
Phillip shot a sideways glance towards the window above them, where Otto Apocalypse sat waiting for the display of power he wanted. On one hand, Phillip didn't feel like giving the man any more than this, knowing any more would bring down a hammer of relentless requests to do the man's bidding, but the other held onto the fact that he wasn't getting out of here unharmed without pushing the envelope.
"Fine," Phillip decided, jumping back down to the floor and forcing open the 2nd gate. "Let's get this over with."
The two rushed forward at each other, their unarmed first reared in preparation for impact. It took only a millisecond for them to reach each other, and Phillip was the first to put his foot down and launch his punch. However, just as he was about to send out the punch, Durandal switched away from her fist for a swipe with her lance.
Phillip predicted his ahead of time, but the attack came out with more speed than he had seen from Schicksal's strongest warrior. With only a little time to dodge, he stepped back and turned his head to dodge the oversized lance. It wasn't enough, however, and he ended up with a graze deep enough to draw blood.
That's when everything blew up.
Three crashes of glasses erupted from above them, and Phillip saw both Rita and Sakura flying towards him at his right, ice blue scythe and blazing red sword is drawn for the attack. To his left, Bronya, her blank face now even more robot-like, also lunged at him, Project Bunny appearing behind with the cannon weapon ready. At the same time, Durandal leaped back to avoid the sudden attackers while withdrawing her weapon from Phillip's reach.
In that single instance, Gabriel quickly possessed Phillip's body and acted.
With an upward kick that moved faster than light, Gabriel evaporated Durandal's weapon from her hands before it could go too far. He then followed up with a mule kick in the woman's abdomen, sending her to the other side of the room to crater the opposing wall. He then reached up with his right hand and captured both Rita's and Sakura's weapons in between his fingers, stopping them in mid-air. Rita smiled and, without a single movement, summoned a large, armored knight with a scythe to swing at Gabriel, only for the scythe to shatter upon impact with his skin.
With Bronya, Gabriel raised his left hand and grabbed onto the outstretched cannon of Project Bunn. Without any show of effort, he forced the cannon up and away from him before launching a palm strike into Bronya's stomach. Bronya retched out a blob of blood when the blow landed before falling unconscious. With the immediate threats dealt with, Gabriel shot a look at the ceiling, where several vines started to spread down towards him but turned to stone during the brawl. With a peak out the corner of his eye, Gabriel noticed Yuna at the window with a face split in half between an angry scowl and abject horror.
"Now, now, girls," Gabriel said with a singsong tone, ignoring the two girls floating beside him that struggled to pull their weapons from his grasp. "You'll all get the sample you're hoping for, but not at this time." With his piece said, Gabriel tossed Sakura and Rita to the right side of the room with a single push of his hand and returned his hold of Phillip's body back to the original owner.
Phillip, now back in his own body, shook his head rapidly to disperse the lightheadedness the angel's possession caused. When he felt right again, he looked over the arena and groaned at what happened in his absence.
'Damn it, Gab! You do know Otto's gonna be breathing down my neck for this.'
"We'll be able to handle it. What you need to be dealing with is your two girlfriends coming down the stairs after I told them about the eighth gate."
'...WHAT?!'
Phillip pulled himself out of the conversation as panic settled into him, and he ran towards the entrance he took to enter the arena. Before he reached it, however, the metal panels that barricaded the entrance were sliced diagonally into four separate pieces. Behind them was a red-eyed Mei looking especially pissed off but faded back into their original indigo hue upon seeing Phillip. She stumbled into the arena, slightly tripping over the debris of the wall she had destroyed, and pulled Phillip into a stranglehold of a hug once she reached him.
"Gabriel...he...he said-"
"I know, I'm sorry," Phillip whispered back to the obviously distressed girl. "Gabriel often says something stupid about things, don't worry about it." As Mei buried her head into the crook of his neck, Phillip looked past her towards the prep room, where Kiana stood slightly off to the side of the break. Phillip held his hand out, offering her a place in the hug, and fully expected her to run into him at full speed.
What he didn't expect was the girl receding further back with not a shout of reasoning for her action.
Concern coursed through his veins, causing him to drop the hug with Mei and stepped towards the fleeing girl. Before he could take more, however, a voice boomed through the speaker.
"Now, wasn't that a wondrous spar? If the winner of the battle could meet me and my precious granddaughter in the upper halls if you please."
A growl erupted from Phillip's throat at the request. He didn't have time to participate in Otto's errand, as Kiana was at the top of his priority list but decided to at least awaken the other girls before doing what he needed to do.
"Mei, could you do me a favor?" Mei gave a shaky nod, obviously still stressed but calmed down enough to give a decent answer. "Go after Kiana for me. I'm going to get the others on their feet, and I'll meet up with you two later." Not confident in finding her voice, Mei simply nodded again before she headed back from where she came from, sending a single glance back as she did.
With Mei gone, Phillip did as he said he would, starting with his opponent from only a couple of minutes ago. Durandal was unconscious, slumped to her side inside a crater made from her impact with the wall, with a little blood flowing from her mouth. With a nudge, she came to, blinking rapidly to remove the distorted image her eyes perceived and bring her back to reality.
"You alright?" Phillip asked, earning a groan in response. "Cool. Help me get your friends up and running again. I'm needed somewhere else quick, but your Overseer is being an ass."
Durandal propped herself onto her hands and into a sitting position as Phillip walked to the closest body to her: Rita. She analyzed him for a brief second as Phillip tried shaking Rita awake to no avail before she spoke.
"Why are you helping us after our attack?"
"Trust me, if this was any other situation, you'd be walking up in heaven," Phillip explained before slapping Rita across the face hard with the back of his hand. This was enough to jar the woman back to reality which allowed Phillip to move on to the next.
"You'd have killed us in our sleep?" Durandal had a mix of surprise, disgust, and concern at this revelation, though the concern was mostly towards Rita, who was rubbing her jaw in pain.
Phillip shot the blonde-haired woman a flat stare. "Name anyone who would have taken that laying down." With no immediate response, Phillip looked back down to look over an unconscious Sakura and prodded her in the side. This seemed enough, as he had to tilt his head to the side to dodge the stab Sakura sent at him.
With his work done, Phillip walked back to the center of the room. "Alright, you three, I've got something to do. If you could stall off your Overseer for a second or so, that would be great."
"And how do you propose we accomplish this," Rita asked with a prim and proper smile, ruined by the growing bruise on her right cheek.
"I don't know, gobble his cock or something," Phillip replied, picking Bronya off the ground and placing her on his back. "You and Durandal seemed to do it a lot metaphorically already, and Sakura seems more than a little eager." He turned around to face the entrance to ignore the look of indignation that crossed the girls' faces. Before Phillip started walking, an idea passed through his head and caused him to look back at Durandal.
"You and a friend of mine seem to have a rather similar fighting style, so could I ask you to train her a bit? Her version isn't as honed as yours."
Durandal's face morphed out of terror and into confusion. "A friend? Do you mean the Kaslana of your group?" When Phillip nodded in response, Durandal shot a look at Rita before speaking up. "So, you two aren't in an intimate relationship."
"That's… a work in progress. Look, can you, or can't you?"
"…I could, but shouldn't she be well trained as it is?" Durandal asked. "The Kaslana gun kata is a strong but easily learned art. A simple book should be able to help to stuff aid her."
Phillip noticed Rita's grimace but not from pain. A discrete look told him that there was a secret being hidden by Rita from Durandal, but he wasn't too interested in digging it up. So, he simply pushed on with his request.
"She's better at practice than studies. She needs a teacher who knows the art, and her dad ran off on her in the middle of it."
Durandal seemed to consider this for a moment before she gave a nod. "I'm willing to teach, so long as she's willing to learn."
"Thanks. See ya." With this, Phillip positioned Bronya into a better position for her piggyback before running like a blur back to the upper level. It only took him a second to reach the terrified Yuki and stupefied crowd. He dropped Bronya down, leaned up against the wall behind them, and decided to address Yuna.
"Are you okay?"
"I… I don't…" Yuna's voice trembled as fear leaked out, her face morphed back to normal. As she struggled to get her words out, Phillip decided to pull the bandage off immediately.
"You lost control," Phillip started but quickly added on before Yuna's terror could multiply. "But that's okay right now. It's what the Honkai classes are for and will help you on: keeping control."
Yuna looked him in the eye, every ounce of fear on display there for him to read, and said only one thing. "Help me."
Phillip let out a sigh before he summoned a clone to his side. "I can't guarantee everything will go well even if I did this, but my clone can help. Before they do, though, can you tell me where Mei and Kiana ran off to?"
Yuna pointed over her left shoulder, towards the main entrance of the building. Phillip didn't ask for specifics, immediately belting down the path as he dodged and stabbed through the crowd. He only slowed when a familiar blonde man stepped in front of him.
"Congratulations, Phillip. You successfully- Ack!"
Phillip didn't give the man the pleasure of finishing his speech, taking his fist into Otto's stomach with all the restrained strength he had from the battle. With one last shudder of the building in his wake, Phillip left to find where Kiana Met went to.
11:45 am,
It took him far too long to find where the girls were, having run the course of the entire island before he did so, and only because Mei waved him down. Once Phillip was close enough, Mei grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him towards one of the buildings that were much closer to the arena than he thought Kiana would run off to.
Once they were inside, Mei pulled him towards a supply closet that was closer to the entrance but stopped just before opening it. She turned towards him, a stern look in her eyes, and spoke.
"You need to talk with her. You're the only one that can help her with what she's feeling."
Phillip gave a slow nod at this to show his acknowledgment of the situation. Mari seemed to accept this as she pulled out the closet door and allowed him through. It didn't take him long to find Kiana and the sight hurt to see.
Amongst the shelves of cleaning tools and supplies, Kiana was seated on the cement floor with her knees up to her face. Labored and shaky breaths sounded out from her and Phillip noticed once he grew closer, her shirt was drenched. When he sat down beside her, Kiana turned her head towards him, revealing her puffy, red eyes to Phillip. She shuffled away from him, though Phillip didn't follow and started showing with the distance given.
"Kiana, what's wrong?"
The girl didn't answer immediately, turning her head back to her knees instead. She spoke a moment later, but the words were muffled by her knees.
Phillip let out a sigh at this. "Kiana, I can't help you if you don't tell me what's wrong."
Kiana moved her head again, though she turned away from Phillip this time. She spoke again, with words vastly more hearable now that her knees didn't muffle her. "You're gonna leave me."
Phillip sighed deeply, sending Gabriel as many mental curses as possible for putting him in this position, and tried to choose the distance between him and Kiana again. Kiana, for her part, didn't retreat any further and started still when Phillip placed a hand on top of her knee.
"Kiana, I can't get to the last gate, even if I wanted to. Gabriel has it placed behind a lock stronger than even he is."
Kiana finally looked his way, a look of surprise gracing her face with this revelation. "But... Gabby said-"
"Gabriel has a bad habit of pulling bad jokes out of his ass," Phillip stated. This was a half-lie, as Gabriel only had a problem with saying he didn't know much when he was basically omniscient upon entering a dimension. The angel only concealed stuff for dramatic effect, which was a net negative for Phillip. How much truth he put into this one, however, Phillip couldn't determine.
"S-So, you're not gonna leave?"
"Not if I have anything to say about it." This was apparently enough for Kiana, causing her to leap from his seated position and wrapped Phillip in a tight hug. With a small struggle, Phillip pulled his arms out of the hold and reciprocated the affection. They sat there unmoving for a few minutes as Phillip determined how he would approach Gabriel further on this topic.
"Ah, there you are."
The serene moment came to a screeching halt as Phillip let out a menacing growl. He turned his head to look at the door, where Otto stood with false confidence etched on his face. There were two stains of blood at the corner of his mouth, showing Phillip's attack hurt enough. Nevertheless, the man simply straightened his robe and gave a slight bow to Phillip.
"I'm sorry for the less than respectable actions of my Valkyries. I assure you-"
Phillip didn't wait for the man to finish his little speech, storming up to the now open door held open by Otto's hand. He grabbed it and slammed the door against the man, creating a dent in the perfect shape of Otto's face. After a moment of silence (to which Phillip heard Otto pull his face out of the dent and sulk away), Phillip pressed his forehead against the steel door.
The door opened, forcing Phillip to step back to allow it, and Mei came in, looking slightly disheveled from Otto's arrival. "Maybe it would be best for us to return to the class."
Phillip breathed out a sigh. "Alright, let's go." He looked back at Kiana, who climbed to her feet and looked vastly better than before. "Are you ready?"
Kiana gave a bright smile and ran out of the storage room quickly.
"Last one there's a rotten egg!"
Meanwhile, in the depths of the Siberian tundra,
The frosty arctic of Siberia glistened with powdery snow as it floated gently down to the ground. This still landscape stayed undisturbed by both natural and man-made disruptions. Truly, a calming place for any looking for solace.
That is, until an explosion erupted from the middle of the once-peaceful field.
There, a steel rover tore through the plains, tumbling and spinning down a worn track that it passed through many times before. After this military-graded behemoth of a truck came to a screeching halt, now completely capsized, black smoke bellowed from one of two windows that were now smashed to shards. Several dull thuds came from within before the door burst open with a vicious kick of someone's brown boot.
With a struggling crawl against the freezing snow, Siegfried pulled himself from the wreckage, dragging something behind him. Once out of it, he gave a deep breath of the brisk air before letting out a sigh of contentment. With this all out of the way, he addressed the struggling captor he had in his hand.
"So, I heard Otto's been trying out some experiments involving Herrschers recently. Mind giving me a tip?"
The captured driver didn't speak, a brown eye glaring at the man from the shattered glass of their vizor. They simply struggled harder against the tightening grasp of the larger man. Suddenly, however, they slumped over despite Siegfried doing nothing to expedite the strangling process. He brought them down and noticed a large knife sticking out of the driver's back. Looking in the direction of its probable throwing location, Siegfried saw three figures not too far from him from a nearby hill.
"If you three are assassin's after me, I should warn you." Siegfried tossed the body away and grabbed the claymore strapped to his back. With a simple swing, the blade erupted into a raging inferno as Siegfried glared at the figures. "It doesn't matter if I have one arm; I'm still stronger than half of Schicksal's forces."
The middle of the three dropped from the hill and walked towards Siegfried at a brisk pace. With the sun no longer in his eyes, Siegfried realized exactly who was coming to greet him. With a carefree smile, he swung the blade back onto his back and gave a wave.
"Hey there, Phil. It's been a bit-Ugh!"
This clone of Phillip quickly closed the gap and slammed a punch directly into Siegfried's gut with enough force to launch the truck away and clear the snow on the ground for three feet, showing dark brown dirt below. Siegfried turned his head in shock and found a fierce, wild grin waiting for him.
"We have a lot of catching up to do, don't we, Siegfried?"
Welcome back to the story.
I hope everyone's been having a good day. I've been trying to get back into writing with my new job, but it's been difficult to deal with.
I won't bore you all with the details, but 10-hour jobs are painful to deal with.
Anyway, I hope you all enjoy the chapter, and I'll see you in the next one.