Sofia was dragged by the wing to Melker's office, and her throat was sore from all the screaming. Her bag was torn away from her before she had any chance to detonate her Blast Seed, so even the faint hope of Nero coming to the rescue was looking dim. "L-Look, I swear I wasn't hurting any of-"
"Would you just pipe down already?" Melker yelled. "You're gonna make my ears start ringing!"
She covered her beak with her wings. "S-Sorry-"
"Sorry's not gonna cut it!" Melker snapped, slamming his claws on his ragged wooden desk. "You went around lying to my employee? That kid's ten years old! You could give him trust issues for life!"
The Marowak standing at attention beside Melker sighed and leant over to him. "Are you absolutely sure that this is our biggest concern right now?" she whispered. "She's been wandering around here unauthorized. What if she took something? Or worse, what if she saw something she shouldn't have?"
"Hunter, I couldn't care less about any of our stuff," Melker said. "And if she needed to ask who Toño is, then she hasn't seen anything worth worrying about."
Sofia gulped. "D-Does that mean you aren't going to hurt me?"
"Are you even listening?" Melker asked. "Of course I'm gonna make you hurt! You could burn down everything in the world and I wouldn't be as mad at you as I am for messing with Vark! That kid just got done being assaulted by a random freak! What the hell is wrong with you?"
"B-But- Fabian only went after him because he stole-"
"He's ten!" Melker roared, causing the dingy ceiling fan to shake. "I will have you know that Vark is a precious child, and he's never done a single thing wrong in his life!" He cleared his throat, but he did not relent with his soul-piercing scowl. "Now, you're gonna tell me why you know that Fabian was the child-beater, and if I get a hint that you might even possibly be lying, I'm gonna pluck every feather out of your body, one by one!" Hunter covered her mouth to hide a snort.
Sofia inhaled sharply. "He's my friend but I guess that's not really fair to call him that because we only just met but we were traveling together and I tried to make him stop but he saw Vark steal from Gear Shift and he wouldn't stop-" she took another deep breath, "-and he was just trying to do the right thing and help people and I really think you should let him go because they're gonna kill his mom soon and-"
Melker's eyes widened. "Did you just say that Iris is getting executed?!" he screeched. "I'm gonna tear Dorrie's head off!"
"Y-You know who Iris is?" She squinted at Melker. "Wait- did… Did you just call the Guildmaster Dorrie?" This was the first time that anyone (besides Nero) had ever expressed something other than reverence toward Guildmaster Dorinel in front of her, and on top of that ridiculous nickname, it took all she had to stifle a laugh.
Hunter placed a hand on Melker's back, presumably because he was too tall for her to rest it on his shoulder. "Boss, please calm down. Think of what could happen to Vark and Fitz if you make an enemy of the Guilds. You know they can't handle the outlaw lifestyle! And what would we do about-" she glanced at Sofia, "...you know who?"
He took a deep breath. "...Fine, you're right. I'm not gonna put any of you kids in danger." As he turned back towards Sofia, his expression wasn't as furious as it was moments prior. "Great, now I'm all tired out. You said that Fabian brat's on his way to save Iris, yeah? What an idiot! If he makes it to Renegade's Edge and back alive, I'll eat my own tail."
"C-Can you please… uh… maybe let him go, then?" she stammered, each word feeling harder to get out of her throat than an entire apple would be. "I-If he's gonna die anyway, then why hold on to him, r-right?"
Melker shook his head. "And let Atlas get his weird hand-sword things on one of the last Successors we've got? No way! I'm keeping him locked up in here before he gets himself killed and ruins everything even more!"
Sofia furrowed her brow. "Y-You're against the Head Guildmaster? Does that mean you're with the Ash Syndicate?" As the word "ash" left Sofia's mouth, Hunter winced, and she really wished that she had just kept her beak shut.
"Are you trying to piss me off?" Melker yelled, shooting up from his desk with so much force that some knick knacks on a nearby shelf fell over. "Don't even think the word 'ash' around me! You hear that?"
She gulped. "Y-Yes sir, sorry sir! I swear-"
"They're all idiots! The Guilds, the Syndicate, all of them! All any of them want to do is to make the world worse!"
"Boss," Hunter cautioned him. "Remember, think before you speak."
Melker inhaled deeply before addressing Hunter. "Why… don't you go bother Fabian right now or something?" he said, his voice worryingly tranquil. "Leave me be for a second. I've got a lot that I need to vent out, and I don't wanna make you see any of it."
Sofia gulped. "P-Please don't-"
"Why are you still talking?!" Melker roared. Hunter nodded and stepped out, leaving Sofia alone with Melker. She held her wings up in a defensive stance that Fabian had shown her earlier, but something told her it wasn't going to make any difference. Cracking his knuckles, Melker kicked his desk aside and glared at Sofia.
"I-I didn't mean to-" Sofia sputtered out, tears streaming from her eyes.
"Doesn't matter! If I let stuff like this slide, people are gonna sneak in and mess with my employees every day! And if I have one more person breaking in today, Arceus help me, I'll-"
A thunderous boom went off somewhere below them, the noise distant but loud enough to make Sofia's ears ring. "N-Nero?" she cried out, speaking without thinking yet again.
Melker's head slowly pivoted towards Sofia, his expression completely and utterly emotionless. "Sorry, what did you just say? I know I misheard you, because there's no possible way I just heard you say the name 'Nero,' right? Because that would imply that Nero Moreno is in my house right now, and if that was the case, I don't know what I'd do!"
Finally learning something from the past conversation, Sofia kept her beak shut. They stared at each other for what felt like hours, neither of them moving an inch. Suddenly, Melker lifted up his desk and slammed it into the ground, creating a gaping hole that he dove through without another word.
It took an immense amount of focus for Sofia to stop hyperventilating. By the time her breathing returned to normal, she realized that several minutes had passed and, judging by the constant explosions going on below her, she decided that she would just be getting in the way if she tried to help Nero.
Instead, she hopped out of the window and used her wings to glide safely downward. Her angle was too sharp, so she ended up diving straight into the ground and bruising her beak, though she wasn't especially worried about that. All she could think about was the fact that Nero was probably going to die, and that she'd never be able to find Fabian on her own, and that she was going to be all alone, just like before.
Her brain was fried, and she was in desperate need of a break. She leaned against the castle wall and shut her eyes, hoping to catch even a couple minutes of shut-eye.
Although Nero's new sixth sense could get overstimulating at times, it was even more distressing when it suddenly began to return nothing but white noise from the moment he climbed into the building. He had hoped to locate Fabian in a couple of minutes and leave, but that certainly wasn't going to happen if he had to manually scan the entire ground floor. He was almost starting to regret using Sofia as bait by sending her up the higher floors (which were very unlikely to be where Fabian was held, considering how all the windows would make it easy for him to send out a cry for help). Then again, considering her performance on getting inside, she probably wasn't going to carry her weight anyway.
"Nothing for it, I suppose. The old-fashioned way will have to do." He wasn't exactly an expert on rescue missions, but he was a thief by trade, so he tried to think of this like a heist. And like any good thief, he started by placing himself in his mark's shoes. "For one reason or another, Melker is intending on holding Fabian for, at a bare minimum, a couple of hours, which is more than enough time for him to wake up," Nero reasoned. "That means that, ideally, he would be placed somewhere in which he cannot gather any information about his location or make enough noise to cause concern. A basement, perhaps?"
That gave him somewhere to start, at least. Even if he was barking up the wrong tree with his basement theory, it wasn't like it was the end of the world. There were only so many places where one could hide an entire person, and considering that Fabian was the loudest man Nero had met in his life, it couldn't be that hard to locate him, even off of his limited information.
And so, he wandered the ground floor aimlessly, the dead silence occasionally broken up by violent slamming noises from above. "Sounds like Sofia is having a difficult time up there. That's a shame."
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, he heard a noise that didn't resemble Sofia's anguished screams. It was the faintest sound of unintelligible chattering from directly below, and although Nero couldn't exactly make out any voices, there weren't many other people who it could be. Not one to rush into things recklessly, he readied a Blast Seed and crept around the corner, where he found a set of stairs that led to the upper and lower floors.
Unfortunately for him, a Ghost-type Marowak was heading down the stairs, and Nero was in plain sight of her. Without hesitation, he chucked a Blast Seed at her and bolted in the opposite direction. He was about as far away from an exit as he could be, which was utterly disastrous considering how much noise he just made. "Damnit, why did I throw that? I must be spending too much time with Fabian, he's turning me stupid!"
Melker crashed through the ceiling behind Nero, and a ferocious sandstorm followed him. Nero's fur offered mild protection from the sand, but he was far from immune. "Get the hell out of my house!" Melker roared.
Nero picked up the pace and tossed two Blast Seeds, one in front and one behind, stunning Melker and blasting a hole through the wall that blocked him. "Twenty left," he muttered. He tried using his Successor power to move some rubble out of the way, but unsurprisingly, nothing happened. Something about Melker was shutting down his powers, and although he had one theory as to why, it was so far out there that he didn't want to consider it.
Even though Nero was sprinting as fast as his paws would take him, Melker caught up in no time, with nothing but some singe marks on his shoulder to indicate any damage at all. Blast Seeds could stop him for a moment, but they weren't enough. "Not good. Even if I manage to escape the premises, he'll still be able to pursue me for as long as he likes. I need to disable him somehow."
Pushing out any notion of rescuing Sofia or Fabian from his mind, Nero racked his brain for anything that could help. "Is there anything that could stop him? At least something that could hold him still while I find a place to hide? Or maybe something that could help me outrun him?" As soon as he thought that, he realized how stupid he was. "Of course there is! I'm in the middle of an auto factory!" Seeing as the entire staff of Melker Motors was preoccupied at the moment, committing motor vehicle theft wasn't going to be an issue as long as he could reach one without dying.
Nero screamed inside when Melker's claw barely grazed his fur. His heart pounded as he hurled two more Blast Seeds behind, and the sound of flapping wings cut off for a brief moment. He had earned himself distance, but he couldn't afford to be too wasteful with his seeds; after all, he didn't know the layout of the factory well enough to navigate it, so he needed them to blast through walls. If he ran out and got backed into a dead end, it was over.
He kept up this pace for as long as he could, but as Nero grew more and more exhausted, it became impossible to maintain his top speed, so he had to burn through even more Blast Seeds to keep Melker at bay.
By the time Nero made it to the main assembly line, he had only four seeds left. The room contained plenty of loose parts, but nothing that could even remotely be described as a complete vehicle, but the sunlight filtering through the garage doors meant that he was in the homestretch. Melker was still faster than him, despite having borne the brunt of at least ten explosions in a row, but only needed one more seed to get out, so he could afford to be liberal with the rest of his supply. He chucked two back and one forward at the garage door, blowing it open.
Although Melker was gasping for air by this point, his sandstorm only grew more intense. "I… I'll kill you! I don't care what power you've got, I'll kill you!"
"So, he is aware of Succession," Nero noted. Even most Ash Syndicate members were kept in the dark about that. Melker was clearly someone important, and Nero was certain that he had heard the name before, even though he couldn't remember where for the life of him. "Who are you, anyway?" Nero asked, before immediately wishing that he hadn't wasted his breath on words when he barely had the energy to breathe.
"Why is it so hard for you kids…" he gasped for air, "...to mind your own damn business?!" A purplish-red stream of fire shot in Nero's direction, narrowly missing thanks to his zigzag running style.
The city's floodlights washed over Nero as he finally escaped the building, and he wasted no time smashing the window of the first vehicle he saw, a smaller luxury vehicle that faced away from a sheer cliff drop. He wasn't too familiar with automobiles, but he did know how to hotwire one. It was a skill he picked up when he was around thirteen, when he was fiddling with his language tutor's convertible and shocked himself on the start wires, accidentally starting the automobile in the process (of course, he immediately crashed it into Officer Bertie's Rest urant, destroying it completely).
Nowadays, he understood that shocking himself wasn't necessary. All he needed to do was connect the two start wires underneath the dashboard. The automobile roared to life and Nero slammed the accelerator pedal, which his paw was barely able to reach. Nothing happened, and he realized that he needed to shift gears to get the car going.
To say the least, what happened next was not Nero's proudest moment. He didn't understand what the five numbers on the shifter represented, nor did he know what the "R" meant, but in his exhausted, adrenaline-fueled state, he assumed that the "R" had to have stood for "run," and would therefore move the vehicle forward. So for that reason, he shifted into the "R" gear and slammed the accelerator pedal.
"Now that I think about it, 'R' probably stands for 'reverse,' doesn't it?" he thought, as the automobile lurched backwards and off the cliff.
As he plummeted down, Nero found himself more worried about the sheer embarrassment of making such a ridiculous mistake, rather than the deadly fall. There wasn't much point in worrying about it; after all, now that he was away from Melker's factory, it was only a matter of time before his powers were restored and he could repeat what he did in the water tower. The shame of driving off a cliff for no reason, on the other paw, was something that no amount of superpowers in the world could ever help Nero live down.
A few seconds passed, and Nero's expanded perception returned to him, though there wasn't much to observe in the middle of the air. He took a deep breath and exerted force onto the roof of the vehicle. His entire body burned in agony and every muscle in his body was screaming at him to stop, but he couldn't. His jaw clenched so hard that his teeth ached, and although he could barely feel it through the tortuous pain, the automobile's descent did slow down enough to preserve his life. He wasn't going to be able to move after this, so all he could do was hope that he'd land somewhere safe.
The mayoral office of Ferrumark City was the only location in the mountain where the evening sky could be seen, and despite being a Sandslash with no business being so high above the ground, Mayor Caddock never missed an opportunity to appreciate it. There was nowhere else in the world with such captivating rugged red cliffs, and the sunset bathing the scene only made it more beautiful.
His viewing time was cut short by a knock at his door, one he had been awaiting for years. After swiftly rearranging his desk setup, as to give off the appearance that he had been working, he answered the door.
"Good evening, Caddock!" the Talonflame perched in front of the door chirped, his voice so cheery that it was off-putting. "Nice place you've got here! Too bad the rest of the city can't match."
Biting his tongue, Caddock nodded at him and sat back down at his desk. "It's a pleasure to finally meet with you, Vice Guildmaster Quincy. I presume you're here in lieu of the Guildmaster?"
"In a way," Quincy replied. "The Guildmaster's too busy for stuff like this on a good day, and we haven't had too many of those lately. I'll be the one in charge of managing your little request."
Considering the countless unsavory rumors that circled Quincy, he was far from the person whom Caddock was most interested in talking to, but it was better than nothing. After all, Caddock was willing to do whatever it takes to get the Guilds to put Melker in check. "Then, that means you've considered it?"
Quincy barely glanced at Caddock as he preened his feathers. "Considered it? Sure. But I can't say I'm all that impressed. I don't see how we get anything out of your arrangement."
Caddock felt his eye twitch. "What do you mean by that? I was under the impression that improving the average citizen's quality of life was your organization's top priority. Does leveling the playing field for this upstart industry not qualify as doing that?"
"Wrong!" Quincy said. "Our job is to enforce justice, nothing more. And regulating the dozens of manufacturers you seem to want running around is always gonna be much more difficult than just having to deal with one."
Resting his claws on his desk, Caddock deeply considered what to say next. Quincy's decision to defend Melker offered credence to the bribery rumors he had heard so much about, but calling him out for it would surely result in the end of his political career, and potentially, his life. "I will remind you that I would be the one managing the increased population of the auto industry. Your workload would not be affected, and the extra tax revenue would offset any… unforeseen losses incurred due to the process of ending Melker's monopoly."
Quincy stared directly at him. "How about you shut up and listen to my proposal?" Caddock managed to hold back his urge to cuss Quincy out, allowing him to continue. "We're more than willing to get rid of Melker, on the condition that our organization gets to replace him as the sole manufacturer of automobiles. Of course, we'd have more than one plant running for efficiency's sake, so you'd still get a nice boost to your job market."
Long ago, Caddock had personally bore witness to what could happen to an industry with a Vice Guildmaster at the helm, so he knew all too well that if left unchallenged, this deal could make things even worse for his citizens. "I need a very good reason to believe that you would treat your theoretical employees fairly."
Quincy looked at him funny. "Do you… not understand who we are? Everything the Guild does is 'fair.' We're the ones who decide what 'fair' means!"
Caddock had clearly set his hopes too high, expecting this odious man to be in any way reasonable. "If that's the case, I would like to request an audience with Guildmaster Dorinel himself. I understand how busy he can be, so if necessary, I would be more than willing to make the journey myself."
"That so?" Quincy asked. "Well, I guess it was wrong of me to make that sound like an offer. I'm going to be real with you, the auto industry is far too powerful to leave in your hands. For all we know, you could be plotting some sort of revolution! If that happened the casualties would be unimaginable, so it'll be safer for everyone if we're the ones in charge of it. We will be doing this, so it's just a question of whether or not you'll be around to see it."
"Now you're concerned about your peoples' safety?" Caddock questioned. "Your threats mean nothing to me. If you kill me, anyone who's so much as looked a newspaper in the past few years would tell you that someone from the Vanadis Guild did it. There's no way you could manage this scandal, especially on top of the one that the Guildmaster's heir just caused." Just in case, he generated a throwing stone in a claw beneath his desk and kept his eyes firmly locked onto Quincy.
Quincy shook his head. "Funny you should mention that kid. In a vacuum, yes, I suppose people might assume that we were the ones who silenced you. However, if a crazed murderer such as, let's say Fabian Vanadis, were to be seen within the walls of your city, and one of your most trusted allies announced that he was responsible, then people would come to a much more… agreeable conclusion, wouldn't you say?"
Caddock gripped his stone tightly. "Are you saying Fabian Vanadis is within the walls of Ferrumark City as we speak?" Practically everyone had heard that the Vanadis heir recently murdered an innocent elderly man in a random outburst of rage, so he was shocked to hear that he had managed to wander around in Caddock's city without being noticed.
"Yes, along with a small handful of other inconvenient parties. Remind me, what is the protocol for when a high-profile 'mon like yourself is murdered within the city walls?"
A situation like that hadn't come up for as long as Caddock's been in charge, but he knew the answer by heart. "All entrances would be sealed off until the criminal is apprehended-" he started to explain. "No! You… Is this the reason you scheduled this meeting so suddenly?"
"You know, you're one of the most irritating people I've met in my life," Quincy said, pacing circles around the room. "I can hardly believe such a perfect solution just fell right into my wings! Imagine, solving the Caddock problem by solving the Fabian problem! And while I'm at it, I think I'll collect Toño and that Moreno kid! Catching Toño alone would be enough to secure Head Guildmaster Atlas's favor for life, let alone two Successors alongside him!"
The word "Successor" was entirely foreign to Caddock, but that didn't matter. He hurled his rock at Quincy, piercing a hole through his wing and immobilizing him for a brief moment. He sprinted to the exit with all the energy his aging body could muster. "I have to warn as many people as possible! Even Melker is better than what he's going to do-"
His leg turned cold. Eerily cold, and completely unmovable.
A thick layer of ice glued it to the ground, and try as he might, Caddock couldn't budge. Ice-types were rare in Rumas, and he could only think of one who was swift and powerful enough to disable him so completely. "Lydia?" he called. "Explain yourself. Now."
The Froslass floated in front of him with a deeply conflicted scowl. "I… This is what I had to do. Melker is going to run Gear Shift out of business, and we may never get another chance like this! I just- Why couldn't you have just agreed with him? This didn't have to happen!"
Caddock swung at her with a free claw, only for the ice to creep up and encase it completely. "His plan will make things even worse for you! Don't tell me you seriously trust that horrible man to treat your employees right! Do they mean nothing to you?"
"They will starve if I do nothing!" Lydia shot back, the intensity of her frost increasing. "Life might not be as easy anymore, but this is the best chance I have to protect them!"
"You idiot!" Caddock shouted at the top of his lungs. "Quincy just admitted to knowing that Toño's still alive! Think about what that means! Melker hasn't been bribing Quincy, he's been getting blackmailed by him! I'll bet anything that's the reason Melker suddenly got so stingy! Quincy's the real enemy! Why aren't you fighting him?!"
Lydia turned away. "Because we'd lose! Caddock, you can't fight the Guilds! Nobody can! I'm begging you, please just surrender! I don't want to have to do this!"
The ice crept up to his face, and his vision darkened. "Just do it," he spat. "I can tell that the only person you're loyal to is yourself. If you are truly set on selling out everyone you hold dear, just have the decency to kill me so I don't have to look you in the eye anymore."
"I told you, I'm not doing this for me-"
"Don't waste your breath."
She opened her mouth as if to say something, but if she did, Caddock could no longer hear. Not that he would be interested even if he could hear.
The ice crept past his ears and into his mouth and nose, and when he tried to inhale, nothing happened. This was it for him.
Even knowing that he had already drawn his final breath, Caddock maintained his defiant, disappointed glare, and he held it for as long as he maintained consciousness.
His vision faded, and his thoughts slowly grew farther and farther away from him, until nothing was left at all.