Floor 40 - Chapter 2: The Marquis de Sade
Jet often found himself wondering exactly what decision he had taken in his earlier life - or even in an earlier life for that matter - that led him to be in this exact set of circumstances…
Tied up, gagged and glaring broadswords into his captors.
"Oh I must say, the damsel in distress look suits you, Jet…" Albion smirked, and he wondered what it said about him that he, quite honestly, thought Albion would look better without a head in that moment.
"Mmph muu." He swore against the bindings, though to no avail. It wasn't as if anyone could tell what he was saying anyway…
"Now now, there are children present. There's no need for such profanities…" Albion taunted, because of course the murderer knew what he was saying, even whilst having his one act of defiance stripped from him.
Scratch glaring broadswords, he was glaring artillery pieces at the Laughing Coffin member now.
"As for everyone else, just so you know, your current treatment is nothing personal. What comes next though? That absolutely will be. My associates promise they will make examples out of all you…"
"Assassin!" A young woman cried out, clearly not reading the room, and definitely not realising this was no robbery…
This was going to be a damn massacre!
And he couldn't do anything like this, other than snarl and growl as everything went to hell in a handbasket.
"Now now dear, I am far more than any regular assassin…" Albion held the young woman's chin up, almost in a perverse mirror to the usual tropes of romance novels set in the era… before forcing something down her throat. "I have more experience than you could imagine with destabilising regimes, and yours is as despotic as they come. Honestly, Jet, I'm disappointed in you, I thought you'd be a little more… heroic, and not muscle for hire."
Koharu glared at the bastard holding them all hostage, just as fiercely as he had, but unfortunately for them, their wish for Albion to just drop dead didn't seem to be all that likely…
As they glared at him, the woman's skin became almost cracked, as if it was a piece of plastic heated up to its fracturing point, and her eyes glazed over as she fell to the floor, very clearly dead. "You didn't have to do that!" Koharu shouted at him, the horror of what had just happened very clear in her voice, as well as a righteous anger at watching the completely pointless murder…
"Of course I didn't have to, dear." Albion shrugged. "I wanted to, though, and that's all that matters really, isn't it? What do we all want from life - to be free, to be happy… and this is when I'm happiest."
There was an exaggerated gasp from the room, along with cries of "devil!" and "monster!", before those people quickly found themselves meeting similar fates. "The lifestyles of the rich, completely oblivious to the suffering you all cause… it's a shame the real ones usually have better bodyguards, really…"
"Says the man who poisoned the punch." Said another member of the aristocracy, who received a needle into his chest for his valid point.
"Now that really wasn't very intelligent, was it?"
"Perhaps one could say the same thing about your little charade, demon." Who was that-ohh…
The red-haired girl - he made a note to ask her her name when they made it out of here - stood there, a look that he very much recognised… because it was the look he usually had on his face.
His Doctor face, he called it - the look of a hero swanning in and saving everyone in some kind of insane swashbuckling scheme…
Despite the look on her face though, he could sense the rage in her voice, and thought about something else… where was Rain?
She had been outside with whats-her-name when everything had gone to hell in a handbasket, and he hadn't seen her since then…
"And who might you be?" Albion rolled his eyes, and he did his best to try and wriggle out of the bindings, just about managing to rip the bow around his wrists before Albion's attention wandered…
"I am Lady Scarlet, and you, monster, will yield before your superiors!"
"I shall do no such thing." Albion snorted, and he looked over at Koharu, giving a wriggle of his fingers to show his hands were free again. "Still, I should have killed you when I had the chance… and I do not intend to make that mistake twice."
The noblewoman was certainly doing a good job at getting Albion's attention, if nothing else, forcing him to focus on the obvious threat at hand, rather than his "prisoners" - a mistake he intended to make into a fatal one…
With a nod of his head, he began to rummage through his inventory for something sharp - hopefully Caeldfwlch, but if not, anything sharp would do the trick for removing Albion's head from his shoulders… or at very least, turning him into a colander with extreme prejudice!
"Oh, and don't think I haven't noticed you, Jet." Albion said calmly, without having even so much as turned around. He pulled his gag aside, and stood up for the first time since they had all been knocked out.
"Oh, I'd be disappointed if you hadn't." He said, mirroring the calmness he saw from Albion. "Means I don't have to be stealthy about it anymore."
"As overconfident as ever."
"It's not overconfidence if you can back it up." He reminded the older man. "And I'm more than capable of that."
"Oh, you think so?" Albion smirked, and he knew that was never a good sign - it was a sign that Albion was already one step ahead in his plan, and given only Tieze had returned from their duel, he had a nasty feeling what that plan was…
Rain.
"Well then, if you insist - bring our esteemed guest in." Albion taunted, and the incapacitated Rain was almost thrown into the room, unconscious, tied up and with a burlap sack over her head. "It would only be too easy to kill her like this - but it would be nowhere near as fun. I speak from experience there…"
He honestly wasn't sure what experience that meant, but he had a horrible feeling that murder wasn't Albion's only crime, and in that moment, he felt as if he was fighting a hydra… he had two heads he planned to remove with extreme kinetic prejudice!
"You vile wretch!" Scarlet said to the cretin standing in front of them. "Release her this instant!"
In that split second, his sword had finally materialised on his side, and he placed his hand on the hilt, ready for what might come next…
"That is actually a rather good idea, I think." Albion said with a nod, the one thing that did catch him off guard - Albion showing mercy? No, there had to be some kind of wordplay or game in there... "Johnny, go and release her - from the top floor."
And there it was.
He shot a look at Scarlet, who seemed to catch onto exactly what that look meant, despite the fact that the two of them hadn't really interacted before - stop that creep, I'll handle Albion - and she took off after Johnny Black, whilst he stood tall on the ballroom floor.
"So which is it to be, a game of wits, or a game of-"
"Oh shut the hell up already!" He launched into a flurry of piercing strikes to push Albion back, and hopefully close his mouth briefly. It didn't work as Albion was able to redirect most of his strikes, wielding his sword in a way he'd never really seen before - at least not in reality.
Maybe in Star Wars, he supposed, but a lightsaber was almost certainly a lighter weapon than even a one handed sword, and had it been anyone else, he'd have almost been impressed by the unconventional style…
As it was Albion though, all it achieved was pissing him off further.
"I believe I may have hit a nerve with this one…" Albion grinned as he attempted to circle him, and remembered something in the back of his head. After the fight with Alaz, he had assumed that his aerokinetic powers would soon disappear, and that after about a day or so, he would be back to normal…
Only they hadn't - or at least, not fully. He was no longer able to leap massive distances, and generate blasts of wind that knocked an opponent down, but he could, if he thought about it a great deal, use the wind to augment his movements and most importantly for this fight, supercharge the wake generated by his sword.
"Oh nah, just that your voice really gets on my nerves - never could stand your accent!" He joked, as he swung at Albion, his sword making contact with the murderer's blade… only for the turbulence behind it to hit full force.
Far from a witty comeback - or just any kind of comeback, actually - Albion simply growled as he kept on attacking. "What's the matter, gramps, you need your frame? Or just not used to actually fighting someone on the level?"
"I will make you eat those words!"
"No you won't, but I'll make you eat this instead!" Switching to his free hand, he readied a burst of wind behind, and whilst one hand held Albion's sword at bay, the other plunged straight into the man's stomach, and for once, the man's smarmy expression fell away, replaced with one of complete and utter shock…
"Wh-what… are you?"
"I'm Jet, the Knight of the Wind. I'm 18 years old, from Avon, and I want you to know who bested you." He told him, a razor sharp edge to his voice as he drove his boot into Albion's foot. "Now kneel!"
Albion had no choice, and fell onto one knee in front of him. "So, you have me at your mercy… could you truly bring yourself to kill me?"
Jet looked at the wounded man in front of him, and thought whether he was really going to do this - killing him in battle was one thing, but Albion was reduced to nothing like this. It would simply be an execution, and he wasn't sure he should be judge, jury and executioner like that… what right did he have to take another life?
Oh right, that other life was Albion's. A man who, by all accounts, had no redeeming qualities, and-crap, he was teleporting!
One strike was all he managed to get onto him before Albion disappeared again, only this time shrieking in pain, as he disappeared leaving both of his hands, and a significant portion of his left arm behind as he went…
"Shit." was all he was able to mutter, as he looked down at the dismembered limbs in front of him in frustration…
Yes, he'd made him a fair bit lighter, and certainly a lot less use in combat - no hands and only one arm were certainly not an ideal circumstance in that regard - but he was still alive, and based on that exchange, Albion's fighting skills were… passable.
That was all, not brilliant, not even really any good, but enough to survive. No, he was dangerous because of his brain, and unfortunately, Albion had gotten away with that part of him still attached…
And why was that? Because he'd hesitated.
He turned to where he was expecting the remaining members of Laughing Coffin to be, and decided to grandstand a little bit… "So, all of you lot, you going to do the smart thing and run like hell, or-" Only for none of them to still be there, having gotten the hell out when Albion did. "Why am I not surprised the rats fled the sinking ship…"
As he walked over to Koharu, he spotted Scarlet returning with the unconscious Rain on her shoulders, and a confidence that only came from being a noble of some kind (or painfully self-unaware, something that often came from being nobility…), especially given the fact she was literally carrying someone over her shoulder. "Good riddance to bad rubbish."
"He'll be back - he left a few things behind when he scarpered…"
"Like what?"
"This for one." He made a show of picking up the severed hand, before his mouth moved faster than his mouth again... "Handy."
Ignoring the audible groans behind him - including some from even the NPCs, who clearly didn't appreciate a good one-liner (though he had to admit, that wasn't a good one-liner, but rather an atrocious one.), he checked over Koharu. "You okay?"
"I should be asking you that one, you were tied up worse than we were."
"I suppose I should be kind of concerned by why he did that, but that's a question for another time, I think…" A time when he could stomach the answer he didn't want to receive.
Noticing his shudder at the thought, Koharu changed the topic of conversation as they walked over to their unconscious friend."How's Rain?" She asked as he kneeled beside her, checking for vital signs out of habit, before reminding himself that was a really pointless thing, given they didn't have vital signs in here…
What he could see though was that she had been poisoned by Albion, but it was at least a poison that would wear off of its own accord, something he had no doubts that Albion had intended to use against her when she woke up.
"A bit worse for wear, but not as bad as Albion left here with." He looked at the dismembered hands and winced at the thought.
"Something's bothering me about that though." Koharu said, rubbing a finger against her neck. "Albion knew we were here, and as far as we know, no one outside us knew that. How?"
"That would be, as you say Jet, the million pound question. How did they know we would be here?"
"Dunno about answering that, but I've found something on Albion's arm - look." Philia passed the arm around like a demented show and tell, revealing something tattooed on his arm - well, something other than the Laughing Coffin tattoo anyway.
A pictogram of some kind - a horn that looked as if it had been broken by being run over.
"Huh?" was the obvious answer to that. "A broken horn?" Koharu asked, clearly as confused as he was by that.
"Guess that's one more mystery to answer then, isn't it?" He sighed, before realising something else. "Wait, where are Nautilus and Yuna?"
"I haven't seen them since the start of the attack." Kizmel thought aloud, and an alarm began to ring in his head, an alarm marked as "obvious trap that we missed".
Thankfully, before any more panic set in and a full on search party was organised to look for them, the younger pair returned from wherever they'd been. "Oh thank god." He breathed a sigh of relief as they returned.
"Sorry, we kind of got away from them, but got chased by them-why is there a hand on the floor?" Nautilus asked, a look of disgust on his face at the severed appendage.
"I managed to disarm Albion - literally." He admitted, looking over at the arm on the floor.
A comment that earned him a thumbs down from both Koharu and Philia, with a slightly confused Kizmel joining in a few moments later. "Better than the last one, but still bad."
"Everyone's a critic…"
"Well, I shall be off…" Scarlet said out of nowhere, though he could tell there was something odd about her - and not just the suit that made his look baggy by comparison. "We shall meet again, I suspect. Do stay alive until then, all of you…"
Almost as soon as she had said her little speech, she had disappeared into the crowd and away from the ball with little fanfare - a stark contrast to the entrance she had made when she arrived.
"I think I speak for us all here when I say… who the hell was that?" Sanya, the target of her affections, asked, still in complete shock from the events of the evening…
"Whoever she was, I doubt that'll be the last time we see her…" He said, realising that they'd just set off the quest chain for the floor, as a dull ping rang against the recovering room…
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Rain woke up with a headache that would politely be described as "apocalyptic", one that must have come from the side effects of Albion's nasty little trick…
Wait, Albion, everyone had to-
"And you are awake, finally." Sanya said with an amused smile. "It makes a change when I am telling you off for sleeping in, does it not?"
"Where is everyone?"
"I believe, at least according to the message from the orange orangutan, they are "receiving a bollocking for last night - this guy really does like the sound of his own voice…" or at least, that is what he told me." Sanya seemed genuinely relieved that she wasn't there, and to be honest, so was she.
Jet was probably the worst person to try to tell off for perceived shortcomings - not because he didn't accept that he had them, but because he knew how to point out whatever handicap they had been set that had led to the disaster in question…
"Is everyone…"
"They are fine, Nijika." Sanya told her reassuringly. "Minus some confusion around why Jet was tied up more than we were, anyway." It was telling that even Sanya seemed disgusted by that, and whilst she hadn't been there, she had a feeling that she knew why…
"What about…" Rain paused and realised something - she had no idea of the name of the young woman that Albion had no doubt slaughtered when she was out of the picture… "I never even learned her name."
"Nor did we - she called herself Scarlet, but at least Philia thinks that is an alias." Sanya admitted. "Too much about that young woman does not make sense to me - from her entrance, to the way she departed…"
"Albion didn't kill her?"
"No, far from it - Albion left in a far worse state than any of us did." Sanya allowed a wicked grin to come to her face at that thought. "The Knight may have allowed him to escape through his slow actions, but he did at least take his pound of flesh as he left…"
"Do I want to know?" Rain asked, nervously.
"He left with an arm missing and both hands absent. An impressive shot from the knight, I must admit."
"Sanya, he has a name, you know?"
"Fine." Sanya sighed. "Jet did well, considering his handicap. We had no idea if Miss Scarlet would actually succeed in retrieving you, and we were still partially tied up too - not to the same extent as he had been, but it was still a factor."
"So, what actually happened?" Sanya smiled, and Rain realised that asking Sanya of all people to tell the story was not likely to end with a short story, but rather one that would take up the rest of the day…
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Eventually, Sanya had finished her explanation of the events that had led to her waking up, having missed the whole thing, and she'd decided she needed some fresh air, and so, she'd taken a short walk around Perranzabuloe. If she was honest, she was as curious as the others over the identity of the young woman she had nearly duelled, and yet, who had come to her assistance when no one else could…
If anything, she at least owed her a thank you for the rescue, she thought as she took a walk through the town and noticed a poster for the local opera. She'd never been a massive fan of the opera - even though both her parents had tried to sit her down to watch Les Miserables, she was 4 at the time, and as such, had the attention span of a four year old too…
Still, it wasn't the opera itself that attracted her attention, no - it was the head billing on the flyer:
Mademoiselle Écarlate.
Now, Rain would readily admit that her French was a bit rusty - unlike Japanese, Russian and English, she rarely had a chance to use the time she had spent learning the French language, but she did recognise the word Écarlate…
Scarlet.
And what had her mystery opponent/rescuer supposedly called herself? Scarlet.
It wasn't exactly a gotcha moment, but it was certainly a lead if nothing else…
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Having bought a ticket to get in, and found a vacant seat in the auditorium, Rain had her suspicions confirmed almost immediately when "Mademoiselle Écarlate" took to the the stage, singing and sword fighting (which, as someone who had dreams of performing herself, was something she found extremely impressive; just the level of coordination needed to do such a thing was its own achievement, let alone doing it well…).
The young woman on stage, whilst not entirely identical to her opponent last night - something she put down to either makeup or an effort to mask her identity somewhat - was definitely close enough to who she'd attempted to fight.
It was hard to mask bright red hair after all - she knew, she'd tried - and this young woman had no intentions of doing so, she thought as she sang about her melancholy at how all things fell apart, whilst promptly skewering a man (though probably not literally - she had watched enough videos on how magic tricks were performed to imagine there was some kind of redirecting of the blade involved, especially a sword as thin as hers…) through his shoulder.
The show was surprisingly good, even though she'd never really been interested in the subject of opera, and she found herself watching intently throughout the remainder of the three hour runtime, before the curtain fell and she decided to make her move.
She hoped she was right, else this was going to look very strange, and make her look like a stalker of some kind, rather than being grateful for the rescue…
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"Mademoiselle, you have a visitor." A stagehand said as she walked behind the curtain, and far from the rehearsed image they'd presented to the public, it truly looked like chaos backstage.
How anything got done, Rain seriously had to wonder - where was the efficient change of clothes, the organised army of people sorting out the set with almost clockwork precision… Oh right, she wasn't here to judge their stage practices, was she?
"Hey, I don't know if you remember me, but-"
She heard a smattering of comments and titters from the other actors, mostly "Oh good, she's gotten another one…", and Rain found herself wondering exactly who this woman even was…
"I cannot say I do, I am sure I would remember a face as lovely as yours…" She told her with a flirtatious smile and a wink, before taking her hand in her own, and placing something in it. "But here, for an admiring fan of mine…"
That was all she had a chance to say, before she found herself being ushered towards the exit hastily, and in her confusion at the whole thing, Rain could only find one thing to say to herself… "That was strange." She thought aloud as she found herself out on the street outside the auditorium.
"What was?" Koharu asked, having seemingly appeared out of nowhere.
"Wait, where did you come from?!" She asked, almost leaping out of her skin at the surprise appearance of her friends.
"We found a flyer for Mademoiselle Ecarlarte, and we figured she might have something to do with our mystery friend last night…" Jet explained, looking quizzically at her, as if something was up with her… "What were you doing here?"
"I, umm, I had the same idea." She explained, and looked at the gemstone in her hand. "Went backstage and she gave me this, but said she didn't recognise me."
"To be fair, you did have a sack over your head for a lot of it…" Jet mused, before the combined glare from herself and Koharu shut him up. "Still though, you two ended up dueling - surely she should've recognised you from that?"
"Not to mention that gemstone." Koharu added. "Can I have a look at it?" She handed it to Koharu, who studied it intently. "It's a ruby of some kind - very small, but probably worth a lot of money, even like that. It's beautiful though…"
Sensing a chance to get her own back for the comment about wearing a bag, she took it. "Well, Jet, you know what to get Koharu as a wedding ring…" She joked, and watched as one of his eyes twitched at the thought.
Rubies were expensive, even she knew that.
"Don't worry, I'm happy with diamonds…" Koharu grinned, joining in. "Besides, that'll give Philia some treasure hunting to do - helping you look for gemstones."
"What is this, gang up on Jet day?" He asked blankly. "Still, why would you give someone you don't know a fairly valuable ruby? It's not exactly what I'd call an obvious go away, especially not if she wanted you to go away and stay away?"
"Maybe it wasn't?" Koharu thought aloud. "Rain, did she seem in a hurry to get you out of there?"
"Yeah, I basically didn't get a chance to say anything other than asking if she remembered me." She answered. "I thought it was a bit rude, but maybe she wanted to keep last night hidden?"
"Why though?" Jet asked. "She seemed pretty happy being the centre of attention last night…"
She thought about it, and came to a realisation. "We still don't even know her name - Mademoiselle Écarlate is probably a stage name of some kind, and Lady Scarlet is just that but Romanised. So, other than that we think we know she's an opera singer, we still know very little about her…"
"I believe my ears are burning with all this talk of me…" The topic of conversation walked up behind them. "I suppose it was only a matter of time before you came looking for me - this is a small town, after all - but I did rather imagine it to be a bit longer than the next afternoon, you know?"
"So… who are you?" Jet, ever the most direct of them, asked the question on all of their minds.
"Let us find somewhere peaceful, and I will reveal all to you."
Based on that stage show, she was hoping that was not a euphemism, and was in fact offering to explain everything to them… because god only knew they needed it if they didn't want to go around in circles all day.
{Author's Comments}
So I have a job now.
I'm lucky in that it's only two days a week, and for what it is, it is a really good job, but it does now mean less time to write - though this month was an exception due to having to do five day weeks for training, all of which meant this chapter absolutely refused to come into being for a bit.
Still, it's come into being now, and I'm reasonably happy with it.
Even so, I'm not too sure what my writing schedule will look like now I'm at work, so I'll continue to aim for at least monthly updates to this and ACES, with as and when updates for everything else.
Anyway, enough about my life, and hopefully you've enjoyed these past two chapters (I think I forgot to put an author's note on the last one... whoops.), and I'll see you all soon for the next update!
Signing out (this time),
Midland 2541