Chapter 42-
“If I’m speaking honestly, I can’t wait to be out of here.”
Advent moved his knight across the chess board, threatening Gruse’s bishop. “Well, I don’t mean that in a bad way, I just like sunny weather. I guess-- what I want to say-- is that I’d like to spend time with you guys without worrying about a job.”
“Somewhere sunny, then?” She moved a pawn diagonal to her bishop, threatening his knight if he chose to take it.
“Hm…” he examined the board before making his next move. “Yeah, somewhere sunny.”
“You’re pretty pale for someone who likes the sun.”
“Well, as long as I’m in the shade, I don’t mind.” He moved his knight to a safe position. “And you shouldn’t comment on anyone’s paleness,” a smug grin crossed his face.
Gruse scoffed.
“You should know that I like gloomy weather much more.”
“So, you like it down here, then?”
“Down here, there is no weather,” she retorted. “It’s all the worst parts of a rainy day without the rain. There’s no excitement, rainy weather is exciting.”
“What? You can’t leave the house, and the only thing it’s good for is collecting worms.”
“The rain waters the Earth, and washes it away, it’s all about renewing life.” She was adamant in her words, while at the same time, lifting her queen, the wood clacking as it returned to the board.
“You’re in check.”
Advent stared at the board.
“Huh?”
His eye twitched and his head bobbed back and forth, trying to figure out the best position he could move his king to.
Gruse leaned back in her chair, admiring her play, when the hairs of her neck stiffened.
“--?!”
Her eyes shot up to the side front-door of the warehouse, only fifteen feet away.
“Eroh,” her voice was urgent enough to prompt him from where he was sitting on the ground, tracing his finger through the dust.
“Hm?”
She did not lose her focal point from the dirty window.
“There’s someone outside.”
---
Two days prior, Gideon, Isaiah, and Angelique found themselves scouring the warehouse district of Hilltop.
“Is that familiar to you?” Isaiah pointed to an empty lot.
“No, that’s not it.”
Isaiah hated this part of the city, covered in filth and soot. Loose bits of trash were littered everywhere one looked, rotting food, pieces of paper. The further they moved in, the more squalorous it became. Gideon seemed to notice it less, and was more focused on what was there, rather than what it meant to him, to the people who lived there.
At once, he stopped dead in his tracks. His companions walked a few paces before noticing that his attention was directed elsewhere.
“Isaiah?” They followed his gaze to the other side of the street.
A boy, no older than twelve or thirteen, stood on the curb in his black suspenders, wearing an ill-fitting cap, beside him were four or five of his siblings, younger than him. Three were playing a simple game with stones, the other two were arguing back and forth about something.
In the street, a horse lay dead and emaciated.
He first thought back to his own farm, where he had a few horses of his own.. They were wonderful creatures, and his family loved them as much as he did. When his youngest son was five years old, he’d taken him for a ride atop one of their steeds, and seen the joy and excitement of interacting with this tamed beast.
This was his most stunning memory of horses, and it sent a great spike into his heart to see one dead in such an utterly drab and pathetic way. Where was the luster of its mane? The strength of its muscles? The thunder of its hooves? The children didn’t ask these questions.
It struck him, then, that this was not an unusual thing for them.
“Gideon,” he could not pull his eyes away from the horse. “Do you like living in this city?”
“Of course,” his friend answered, as if it were obvious.
“You don’t get tired of seeing things like that?”
Gideon was quiet for a moment.
“It doesn’t bother me too much. I’ve killed hundreds of people, you’ve killed plenty. Death doesn’t faze me anymore.”
Isaiah finally turned away from the horse.
“I just don’t think it should be the way of life for a child.”
Gideon couldn’t say anything.
“I guess I never thought about that.”
They walked further down the street before he said anything else.
“Did I ever tell you the first time I killed somebody?”
Isaiah’s lips parted in surprise, Angelqiue listened intently, letting his friend speak.
“When I was ten years old, someone broke into our home in the middle of the night and killed my father.”
They were stunned. Isaiah had always assumed that he hadn’t taken a life until he entered the military. Almost as shocking as his words was the comfort with which he spoke; his voice didn’t falter for a moment, no tears crept into his eyes.
“I took a knife from our kitchen and stabbed him, once in the gut, and then in the throat.”
Isaiah’s heart ached, and then hardened, not for lack of empathy, but because he knew the kind of man Gideon had become.
“My mother couldn’t work after a while, and the military offered good pay for the time.” He chuckled at himself. “And now, I’m here!”
A question hung in their minds, but it was too uncomfortable to ask, as if it were wrapped in a knot. With each step down the pavement, that knot unwound until it was freed from Angelique’s mouth.
“Do you wish it hadn’t happened?”
Gideon was a strong person, it wouldn’t knock him down.
“Of course not,” his answer was swift, he’d thought about this before. “If it hadn’t happened, I’d be a different person.”
“Do you think you’d be a better person?”
Isaiah was taken aback; he would have never asked it himself, but Angelique had that kind of boldness of character.
Gideon didn’t answer so quickly this time, he was bringing up an idea that he was familiar with, but only implicitly. He’d never had to verbalize it before.
“It’s pointless to ask a question like that; I could never know, so I don’t worry about things like that.”
“I am only here, now.”
Isaiah finally found courage that matched Angelique’s.
“So, what I’m getting, then, is that you don’t mind the death in this city?”
“It’s natural, all we can do is avoid it where it’s unnecessary.”
Down dirty, noisy streets they strolled, waiting for Angelique to recognize something. The entire time, Gideon’s words smoldered in Isaiah’s mind, and he found himself silently analyzing his friend’s psychology.
“I wonder… If you were stained by death so early… Was that robber created by the kind of chaotic death that’s the same in this city? The one you love so much?”
He knew where this line of thinking led to, but some things were better left unthought, lest he fall prey to the temptation to actually say them.
In thirty minutes time, they were down in the third Level of the Chaff, where the quality of life was only more dismal. There was no doubt in Angelique’s mind that President Cartwright was trying to calm the masses down at his present speech, only to hand things off to the mayor, who would blame the quality of sanitation in the city, only to hand it off to whoever led the sanitation workers union. Even though Angelique knew that the victims were murdered, it was probably better that it become popular opinion that the water conditions of the city were horrid the lower one got into the dregs. Half of the medical emergencies they dealt with at the Academy concerned citizens who were sickly due to dirty water or food poisoning.
“Perhaps, in this case, I’d rather that the truth be brushed away. We’re here to deal with the real truth.”
He glanced aside and felt a rush in his mind, like deja vu, but warmer and friendlier.
“That’s it.”
He wasn’t excited, his tone was very casual, in fact. It wasn’t a surprise, it was like seeing one’s home after a week away.
The other two stopped, looking in the same direction.
“What is? That’s it?” Isaiah made a mental outline of the area. A tall, decaying warehouse that looked like it had been out of use for years; two garage doors dominated its front, rusted into uselessness. A door sat at the far right of the front end, its window covered in black soot and filth that all but obscured anything inside. Beside it, a wide lot, mostly concrete and weeds, lay unused, a faded sign planted in the ground, “Jonathan’s” was the only legible word, the rest had been worn away. He understood why this place would fit a hideout, if it weren’t pointed out, his eyes would have rolled right over it.
It was a quiet place, no soul, no energy.
Peering from across the street, Gideon tried to catch a glimpse of the interior through the window.
“Should we go around?” Isaiah wanted to get a better idea of the area around the warehouse.
“Yeah, both of you can go, I’ll be fine.”
Like mice, Isaiah and Angelique walked through the lot, taking care not to step on any loose gravel that might alert someone inside to their presence.
---
Eroh leapt from his place on the ground.
“Do I need to deal with them?”
“Maybe, I don’t know,” Gruse furrowed her brow and watched even more closely, making sure not to move so distinctly. Suddenly, whoever was outside made a motion, and two other figures walked past.
“Yes.”
“Alright,” he cracked his knuckles against his head. “You think it’s alright in broad daylight like this?”
“No one’s around right now,” she replied, her voice quick and direct. “Everyone’s at the speech right now, anyone who isn’t wouldn’t matter if they saw you.”
“Nice!”
He took off towards the wall, where a ladder reached all the way to the ceiling, to a short scaffolding that led to the top window. His black robe flowed behind him as he climbed upwards at a remarkable pace for having lost an arm.
The window flew open, his boot hit the ledge. Eroh grabbed his robe at the shoulder and leapt.
---
A noise from above. Gideon’s senses flew into overdrive, a black shape descended towards him.
In a heartbeat, the shape was sliced in two, his saber gleaming in the light.
“You’re fast,” Eroh thought, revealed from behind his torn robe. “But your reflexes have betrayed you!!”
Gideon immediately recognized his mistake and cursed himself for his rashness. Eroh’s claw cut into his right arm, and the assassin landed like a cat on the ground behind him. The captain grunted in agony, whipping around to see his attacker lift himself up.
The exchange between the two men was wordless. A moment later, Gideon’s saber clashed against Eroh’s poison-drenched fingers. Gideon gritted his teeth.
“That should have ripped through his hand, what is he made of?!”
Gideon saw the clear substance dripping from Eroh’s hand, and immediately suspected the worst. Drawing his sword backwards, he gained some distance before pulling his arm across his chest. Eroh’s cruel smile was only incensed when he saw Gideon flex his arm, causing blood and poison to squeeze from the light wound. He knew, in that moment, that this was no ordinary opponent; he fought to kill, he fought to win.
They danced back and forth, exchanging blow for parry in the street. Gideon ignored the blood slowly oozing from where Eroh had slashed him, until he felt it dripping down to his upper arm. After one more clash, he stepped backwards and threw his blade into the air, grabbing his jacket and flinging it off.
Letting loose a wild laugh, Eroh lunged at him, only for the sword to return to his hand a moment later. Eroh saw death rushing for him as Gideon’s blade flew out once more. In a frantic move, he threw all of his weight to the side, knowing that he couldn’t halt his momentum entirely. Flailing his arm outward, he spun on one foot straight past Gideon. Hopping backwards, he made the distance of a few feet between them.
The rhythm of their battle came to a pause. Eroh panted for a moment, until he felt something trickle down his cheek.
“Did he--?”
His acidic blood leaked from a small cut that had opened on his face.
“There’s no way that hit me-- That was too close!”
His hand shook, his whole body trembled; a deep, rumbling anger quaked in his heart.
“It’s only been-- what? Two months?”
Gideon didn’t respond, but his words confused him. Eroh wasn’t even looking at him, his eyes glazed over, he focused on his belt buckle or a strand of loose hair, but not on him. The assassin’s jaw trembled, his fingers danced near where his missing arm would be.
“And again, it’s happening again…”
In the distance, a clock tower chimed.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Again, again, again.
Again, again, again, again.
…
Eroh shattered.
“IT’S ONLY NOON!!!”
He shrieked as if his lungs could not hold all the air he needed to express his fury. Like a wild animal, his feet beat against the ground. His voice never ceased, his shriek only turned into a maddening howl, his eyes were like pins.
Gideon postured his sword, ready to counter the attack, when Eroh lost his footing on the street. He yelped as his legs flew up and he landed on his behind. Gideon took a step back in surprise, but found that his foot slipped on the ground as well. Eroh slid, sliding right into Gideon’s leg, knocking him off his feet as well.
“Kyagh!” he grunted, scrambling for his sword.
“The ground is… cold? Like ice?”
Eroh groaned and looked around wildly. His eyes settled on a familiar face.
“Noire?!”
Perched down near a streetlight, Noire cupped his face with one hand, and kept the fingertips of his other to the ground.
“Who else?”
---
Angelique was not a violent person, and he agreed to this “excursion” (as Gideon called it) under the assumption that it was nothing more than reconnaissance. Reconnaissance, as he neglected to recall from his time as an army doctor, could be just as dangerous as a proper battle.
Myst’s fist collided with Isaiah’s face and nearly sent him spiralling to the ground. The area behind the warehouse was a thin alley, separated from some low income housing by a tall chain-link fence.
“I just need a few feet of distance…!”
Isaiah kept two pistols beneath his jacket, and was counting on them as his main leverage in a fight, but Myst’s offensive was too aggressive, and he barely had time to react as the man took two steps forward for another blow.
Without hesitation, Myst threw a punch for Isaiah’s solar plexus in an attempt to cripple him and set up a finisher. The moment his fist crashed into Isaiah’s chest, it bounced off with seemingly no effect; instantly, Myst felt a shooting pain launch from his knuckles up through his hand.
“Agh!!”
Gripping his hand, he staggered backwards.
“What the-??” he snarled through gritted teeth; it was like he’d punched a brick wall.
Not wasting the opportunity, Isaiah’s hand jumped to his hip. Myst’s killer instinct overpowered the pain, and he moved his body just off-center enough to dodge a point-blank shot. If Isaiah’s hands were lightning, his shot was thunder as it cracked through the air. In less than a heartbeat, his second pistol was out, and another bullet already whizzing through the air.
Myst’s Vocation was very strong, but could not be used casually, and was best suited for long range. Therefore, he was especially trained in close-quarters combat, and had been in situations barehanded versus armed attackers before.
As he weaved out of the path of the second shot, his heart rate accelerated. Battle was the only thing he enjoyed this much; the only time he felt like his doubts were burned away by the heat of combat.
---
The door slammed against the opposite wall as Advent burst into the room.
“There’s at least two intruders!”
In the darkness of the disused office, Mello slowly opened his eyes from his position on the ground.
“I’m assuming that they aren’t just vagrants, then?”
“No, we don’t know who they are yet, but the one out front is going even with Eroh,” Advent sounded frantic, not having been this close to a fight in a while.
Mello’s face, however subtle, perked up in intrigue.
“Oh, really? Is he having a difficult time?” He leaned forward and propped a fist beneath his chin.
Advent looked down the hallway and quickly returned his gaze to his boss.
“When I ran up here, Gruse was saying something about-- maybe-- having to send Noire to help.”
A mild amusement appeared on Mello’s expression, his mouth turned upwards in a small smile, his eyebrows raised ever so slightly.
“Well, then,” he unfolded his legs and stood up. “Gruse is staying with the prisoner?”
“I think she wants to,” Advent answered, tapping his fingertips together. “Myst went to the back to respond to the other one.”
Mello stared at the hall behind Advent.
“I suppose it’s a good idea, I trust her.” He walked towards the doorway. “But I’m curious now. Stay here, I need you to guard the files, you know what to do.”
A thought flashed in the back of Advent’s mind.
“But, what if they come for me?”
He knew the answer, so he didn’t object; his stomach sank a little bit as he built up courage within himself. As he turned to follow Mello to the end of the hall, he noticed something from the corner of his eye.
“Ah!”
Mello looked back from a few feet ahead to see Advent crouched over a cockroach on the office’s threshold.
---
Gideon struggled to gain his footing on the icy ground, quickly assessing his situation.
This new opponent, Noire, was about ten feet away; his ability appeared only to cover a surface in ice; Eroh was still his primary target.
Grabbing his saber once more, Gideon slashed at the ground, missing Eroh once more as he slid around, struggling himself to stand.
Eroh spun his body backwards, using the momentum to get to his feet; as he rose, his arm straightened and whipped outward, a stream of acid shooting out from beneath his index nail. As his focus was impeded by his own madness, the attack was sloppily aimed, and burned through a nearby lamppost. A moment later, the post’s structural integrity failed, and it came crashing down onto the street, glass scattering around the scene.
Noire sighed and stood up.
“I guess you need the help,” he sauntered towards Gideon with an oddly powerful presence. Eroh lunged for the captain, only for Gideon to swing his sword outwards to deflect his attack. Eroh’s move worked, and he transitioned Gideon’s response into a spin, repositioning himself opposite Noire.
Gideon now found himself between the two of them, facing away from the warehouse. The best option would be to create distance, but the safest way to do so would be by moving backwards to cover his blindspot. The biggest issue with that decision was the massive blindspot presented by the warehouse itself; he had no clue how many other enemies could be inside on guard. Inside the warehouse, Gruse nervously listened to the chaos outside. Her eyes fell on the chess board, the king still in check.
In the distance, he heard two gunshots cracking through the air.
“Damn,” he thought. “Isaiah’s already in trouble.”
Immediately, he put that thought out of his mind.
“Isaiah’s strong, he can handle it.”
With that thought in mind, he gripped his saber and smashed his boot into the ground, lunging toward Noire.
---
Gunfire roared through the alleyway, Myst was bleeding from his leg. It was not a fatal wound, but his movements were seriously impeded by the injury.
From behind a large metal storage container, Angelique cowered, waiting for his chance to run. The alley was a short space only accessible through a bottleneck at the far end of the empty lot next to the warehouse, leaving him limited options to escape without risking another enemy confronting him.
Isaiah was almost out of ammo.
He knew that.
He didn’t know if Myst knew that.
With overwhelming confidence, he pointed the barrel of his right pistol at Myst’s head.
“You can’t move quickly enough anymore; from this range, I can land a shot on your head in an instant.”
Myst’s breathing was heavy, his eyes were like steel.
“In all that mess, I lost track of how many bullets you had,” he called with an exceptional calmness. “How many rounds can each of those shoot without reloading? Six? And how many times did you fire? Huh?”
Isaiah said nothing, and merely knocked back the hammer of the pistol, the next empty cylinder rotating into place.
“You’re sure that there’s even a round in there?”
Isaiah remained silent. Myst let out a growling laugh.
“That’s why I never liked using guns, I hate keeping track of how many bullets I may or may not have. I get that way, sometimes, don’t you? Don’t you ever freak out about whether or not what you’re looking at is the real deal?”
“...What are you talking about?” For the first time in the course of their fight, Isaiah felt the sweat on his palms.
“Is there actually a bullet in the chamber? How-- How many times did I shoot…?”
“I mean, take for instance your gun,” Myst explained. “You were so into the moment that you probably can’t remember exactly how many times you fired, right? I’m the same way. Even if I knew that I fired exactly eleven shots, and I knew that I still had that one bullet left, and I knew which one it was in, there’d still be this little termite in the back of my mind telling me I was wrong, that I was out of ammo and totally done for.”
Isaiah desperately wanted to take his hand off the gun for a moment, if just to cool his palm, but he held firm. With what seemed like a great amount of effort, he replied.
“Whether or not I was out of bullets, it wouldn’t change my action.”
Myst raised an eyebrow.
“Oh? So you’re telling me that this could be a bluff? That’s very brave of you, but very stupid at the same time. If I were you, I’d change my whole strategy around not knowing whether or not I had that bullet, doesn’t that seem more logical? Or, at least, it’s the closest thing to what might be logic.”
“What might be?”
“Of course,” Myst answered. “How do you even know that logic is real? How do you know you haven’t made it up to serve your own purposes. After all, how can you say that there’s any one, single logic if you can have your own, that you’d try to pull a bluff on me, huh?”
A dark look overtook his eyes; he raised his hand to his chest, placing his palm across his heart, his index finger and thumb extended.
“Say you fired twelve times just now, and you’re out of shots, if I want to kill you, what’s your bluff supposed to do? To stop me from doing something like this?”
The nail of his index finger began to glow. A wispy, white light seemed to smoke off of it, like a tongue of flame.
Isaiah pulled the trigger.
Thunder clapped once more, and the last bullet in the chamber embedded itself into Myst’s chest. His face went pale, he staggered backwards, not even able to scream in pain. He felt his lungs filling with blood and his eyes bulged from his skull.
…
……
As suddenly as it had entered his body, the bullet was no longer in his chest. In fact, it had never been there in the first place, it was never fired from Isaiah’s gun.
Mello Drameda was standing beside him, his fist over his chest. The air was silent, Myst looked at him with a deep emotion that he could not quite describe, somewhere between admiration, gratefulness, and sheer awe.
“Mello…”
The boss offered only a calm, stoic look in response.