Ryuu had heard it screaming before.
Now, however, the indescribably loud sound was completely different. It held such an intense malice, enough to send shivers through her already flinching body, a reaction she couldn't stop herself from performing, not in the wake of the sheer immensity of its imagined presence.
That was quick to change as she regained her bearings though, looking to where the noise originated, where that unfathomable being burst into view without pause or warning, nor consideration.
There were no similarities with the person that came before it. Stating otherwise wouldn't be funny even as a jest. Its size eclipsed that of a normal human, no—that of even a normal monster, the speed and ferocity it was capable of even more so.
In every sense, it was its namesake.
It WAS a juggernaut.
"Right. Totally forgot. It also may be just a TEENSY bit angrier than last you saw it. But just a smidge. Don't think any one person is at fault though. Yes." Despite the, quite frankly, impossibly tension-free voice that had become the unspoken outlier of their formation, Ryuu didn't tear her gaze away from the black blur that sped past a formation of rock standing impressively amongst its dirt beaten surroundings.
Or, it did.
The stone promptly exploded into thousands of tiny fragments, the monster treating it like simple shrubbery it could stomp through, like its presence didn't even register at all. And naturally, the distance between predator and assumed prey continued to wane considerably, regardless of anyone's feelings on the matter.
"Oh really. Well. How kind of you to inform us."
With something of a snarl in Kaguya's voice, Ryuu had half a mind to check to see if a glare accompanied it, but she didn't dare.
Looking away from that thing for even a moment would be beyond foolish. Not that the alternative filled her contentment either. No, nothing about maintaining her focus on that abomination soothed her.
In fact, it made her wonder how that person could continue to behave in a manner befitting his usual, as if the seemingly very real thought of meeting a gruesome demise with the rest of them didn't once cross his mind.Well, his ineffable attitude aside, the masked individual had the right of it.
However, 'TEENSY' was a bit of an understatement.
The talons flashed with visible eagerness, just as the one remaining eye seemed to radiate the same. It wanted to kill them. It wanted to kill them all and leave nothing left. Anything less, and it wouldn't be here.
In short order, Ryuu found her resolve flickering.
It wasn't something she immediately noticed, but as a sound that had been nothing but unintelligible whispers before became a full-fledged voice, she was all but forced to. It was her own. It was telling her they couldn't do it, that they shouldn't even try, that just like Noin had, they would all soon be at the Juggernaut's mercy.
Who had the right to kill such a creature?
Who had the right to deny the Dungeon its blood-filled bounty? Killing this abomination that which's sole purpose was annihilation, then returning home, wasn't that far too arrogant a dream? Wasn't—
"Celty!"
"Yes!"
Ryuu blinked, briefly mollified by the sight of her own kin raising her staff.
But.
Right.
Her worries vanished, as they were proven unfounded. She had forgotten. She had let fear cloud her judgment, and it dulled her mind. It was an inexcusable folly. Having it charge towards them with reckless abandon, drawing it as close as possible—that was the plan.
Only, one of them didn't know that at all.
All but ripping the metal length from his shoulder, the masked individual hiding a boyish face held it aloft, craning his head to stare down the peculiarly shaped reflective surface resting on top. If he planned on firing the contraption like he had done before, sending that orange flame once again dancing on the creature's hardened body, Ryuu didn't see it. She couldn't. After all, the boy didn't even get the chance to do so.
The sound of electricity echoed in the air instead.
With that, the first baton had been passed.
Light pooling around the edges of Celty's staff, the opaque gem instantly began to coalesce with a fierce blue, sparks fizzling and dancing around it. But that was all that happened. No magical phenomena shot out from the power-imbued tool.
Instead, higher and farther away, something came to be, as if just suddenly blinking into existence. With a loud crackle, a maelstrom of electrified energy, not even announced by a single storm cloud, appeared directly above an oblivious enemy.
Perhaps if country-folk saw it, they might have mistaken it for an act of the gods themselves, but that wasn't the case.
It was the power of a mage finishing the last verse of their chant.
ZAP! CRAccKKKle, ZAP, ZAAAPPPP!
Lightning descended.
It wasn't a singular beam of destructive and wild energy, but several precisely arranged tendrils, stabbing downward in a straight line, like someone had taken a paintbrush to the battlefield epicenter and did a perfect slant. It was so impressively wide, and furthermore boasted such accuracy, that there was no way it could miss its target.
Yet, the soil a few paces beside the monster's lumbering form was instantly charred a stark black, and not a twitch was made in response.
Ryuu sucked in a breath.
A miss.
It had been a complete miss by anyone's standards.
But dread was not what she felt, even if an outsider might have deemed it necessary. A budding anticipation settled over her instead, even more so when the ever-approaching creature didn't attempt to flee. Yes, it wouldn't avoid an attack that wasn't there.
Thus, completely ignoring the failed attempt, the Juggernaut continued towards them unmolested, both its one eager eye and razor-sharp claws flashing menacingly in undiluted bloodlust.
That left it completely and utterly blindsided when a massive explosion tore into its left side.
"KEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!" With a scream that could only be called surprise, a feeling like no other accompanied the sight of the quad-pedal horror being sent thrashing to the side, tumbling across the ground with zero of the animalistic grace shown previously.
Ryuu wondered how confused it was, if it was even capable of such feelings. After all, as far as it was concerned, it had just been knocked asunder by the one thing that wasn't supposed to be able to touch it, the one thing it was supposed to have a sure-fire method against.
Roaring in outrage, the Juggernaut desperately tried to leap to its feet.
But the action failed.
And it was quite the sight.
The murderous looking leg that was capable of tearing them in two actually buckled, and the body of that maelstrom of darkness fell right back to the ground. It tried to move further, but each attempt was met with the same.
One only needed to take a look to see why.
The terrifying beast, which they recognized mainly from its all-black appearance, was now not so uniform in color. Along one side, abyssal armor had given way, and cracks and tears revealed a reddened muscley interior, the newly visible flesh pulsing at irregular intervals. It looked malleable, soft, and much more than that, abundantly vulnerable.
And naturally, when seeing what she caused, a certain girl couldn't be more delighted, and that girl wasn't the green haired bespectacled elf.
"Keep'em coming Celty! Don't let up even for a second—heehee! I'll show you what my babies are capable of!" Hooting and hollering, Lyra was behaving exactly as Ryuu expected, and she allowed herself a tiny smile.
However, she had to admit it was only half in enjoyment of her friend's cheer.
The other half was imagining just how many eagerly awaiting fuses were resting below the dirt surface, ready to be set alight by Celty's precisely coordinated storm.
They hadn't just been twiddling their thumbs while they were waiting for the Juggernaut to rear its ugly head. They had gone to ground, literally. They dug, and spread amongst eleven able bodies, things had been quite productive. It didn't take long at all to create their own improvised countermeasure—or countermeasure(s) in this case.
A nigh appreciative whistle sounded off.
"You rigged the place with bombs?"
Weapon now lowered, the boy was staring at the expanse of land in front of them, but most likely at the objects sparkling and shimmering as they stuck out of the ground, each one a part of a much larger synchronized grid, one that creature was right smack in the middle of.
From this distance they must have looked like fancy gems.
In a sense, they were.
The texture and appearance matched, however, there was not a single person in Orario that would mistakenly think of them as such, not when most of the population handed them into the guild on the daily. And being flammable or explosive? Even a child would look at one strangely if such an absurd thing was said.
And they didn't need to be.
Rather, they just needed to highlight where the true payload was.
In truth, this wouldn't have worked on anyone else; a uniformly filled area with neatly organized monster cores?
Only a thing far too eager to kill them would have fallen for such an obvious trap.
"...You are making it irritatingly difficult not to like you." The already inclining mask further tilted towards the pink haired girl, and the unbiddenly enthused grin Lyra shot back showed exactly how it made her feel.
Crack! CRACK! Crack-CRACK!
Ryuu's attention took off once again as several familiar sounds once again accompanied the fierce blue appearing in the air right above the creature's still halted and struggling form.
Celty's next barrage was ready, and there was no delay.
The fearsome tendrils struck hard and fast, coming down one after another perfectly nailing the sparkling monster cores with such precision and speed that one would have to believe there was some kind of homing magic at play.
That wasn't the case, as Ryuu knew, not when it was assuredly 'as expected' of the one casting.
It was a skill purely Celty's own.
Not a falna-gifted one, but her own talent.
Even before being granted Astraea's blessing, Celty Srowa was something of a genius. Spatial awareness? Accuracy? Child's play. The greenette had tried to explain it to Ryuu before, it merely being a matter of "formulas and vectors", but it wasn't anything she'd been able to readily understand.
In any case, Celty's sharp eyes wouldn't be giving that monster an inch of reprieve.
Things took a turn for the better, more than Ryuu thought they had any right, any realistic justification, to.
Yes, even so, the air continued to crack deafeningly loud as scores of lightning struck gold, bombs exploding into the Juggernaut's bone shaped body. It naturally tried to escape, but each attempt was met with unanimous failure.
The merciless ignitions had it staggering for balance, the concussive blasts sent its beady eye swirling, sweeping its already poor vision into further disarray, and as much as Ryuu wasn't sure before, the way it was screeching with such raucous intensity—wails only continuing to grow louder—it was almost enough to match the decibels of the explosions themselves.
The most important thing, however, was that it couldn't move, couldn't even think of moving.
"In the sky of the now distant forest..."
Thus, the final baton was passed to her.
Each word passed Ryuu's lips, and she failed to contain the blossoming excitement therein. They could do this. They could kill it at this rate. The Astraea Familia wouldn't be wiped out by a monster of this caliber. The justice they believed in wasn't so weak.
There was no way it was.
Holding onto these words, Ryuu felt emboldened enough to continue with the ones she was speaking aloud. So, empowering scripture nearly reaching its apex, final verse on the cusp of her throat, she—
The words stopped.
They stopped just shy of completion.
It wasn't a conscious decision, though.
As much as she willed it, wanted it, no syllables, no utterances followed their predecessors, leaving her spell to do nothing but come to an unceremonious halt. And inevitably, in the very back of her subconscious, she could feel as it flickered in uncertainty, as if it was threatening to fade out at any moment, no doubt wondering why the source of its growing power suddenly vanished so abruptly.
Yet, she couldn't do a single thing about that, not when it was the furthest thing from her mind. All of her focus, without an iota to spare, was on the incomprehensible act playing out before her eyes, so ludicrous, so unexpected, that for a moment she doubted if it was even real.
Lightning... had missed.
No, not missed, not in the correct sense of the word.
After all, the staff-toting girl had been completely spot-on with her aim. Just as before, lightning had congregated high in the air, building its devastating charge so as to strike down upon a blinking monster stone where it could do the most damage.
That's what should have happened, and no outward variable should have caused a discrepancy in that cause and effect.
Yet, something had, and as a result, ice crept into the deepest recesses of Ryuu's skin.
She had forgotten one simple fact about the dungeon, something that every good adventurer knew, that needed drilled into their heads early on, as soon as physically possible.
A monster was always, ALWAYS, at its most dangerous when on the brink of death.
Celty hadn't missed in that her magic hit the ground.
She had missed in something else purposely hitting her magic.
A long grotesque black arm had swiped at the approaching azure onslaught.
The effect was immediate.
The air rippled as the two forces collided, and then an even more fantastical phenomenon occurred, one that shouldn't have surprised her, yet still did.
There was no way she wouldn't be struck dumb at seeing it in action.
A translucent barrier, blue in color, appeared around the Juggernaut, almost like a second skin.
But as much as it seemed to be begging for the contrary, nothing happened in the subsequent seconds the two great forces of light raged on in a stalemate, like the natural progression of time had halted in its tracks, and she was forced to wait. However, that was why Ryuu instantly noticed the change when it happened, and in the same vein, realized her teeth, so very audible, were undeniably chattering without stop.
What she witnessed—it was simple, so very simple, but irrefutably more terrifying.
Exposing a chilling array of sharp dagger-like fangs, the monster smiled.
There was no other way to put it.
Of course, time returned in the next moment, and everything happened all at once.
Sound disappeared.
The energy dancing and sparking off the Juggernaut's body vanished without a trace, but only for it to return exactly a second later with a vengeance, and the resulting light was almost enough to blind Ryuu. Her ears helped her instead, but that wasn't a kindness, not in the deafening way the air cracked as if it had taken the damage instead, and then--
And then most certainly not in the feminine cry that just as abruptly bit into her ears from the side. And, the subsequent screams that mirrored it.
Ryuu's head never moved so fast, having done so purely on its own, a feeling of wanton denial filling up every part of her.
Every gruesome, messy, horrible possibility ran through her mind like a storm, and she was convinced she would meet one of them.
She breathed.
And once she finished breathing, she tried breathing again.
She breathed. And breathed, and breathed, and breathed, and breathed, and breathed, and breathed, and breathed, and breathed—and she realized she couldn't breathe, not when her eyes finally converged on a singular point.
On a green haired girl with glasses.
Eh?
And on the black-clad, porcelain-faced figure that was already in front of her.
…
…
…
Alex found others extremely trustworthy.
No, really.
He would even go as far to say that he was one of—if not the most—trusting human beings on Earth. Of course he wasn't on Earth anymore so that might be liable to change. No. It didn't matter.
He stood by his statement.
There wasn't a more trusting guy than him.
Sure, people might look at him strangely if he said such a thing out loud, but that was because they didn't understand. Or, more like they didn't want to.
See, those ignorant masses had gotten it in their heads that trust was synonymous with friendship and everlasting bonds. Don't make him laugh. One did not need to have such relationships in order to garner trust.
All they needed, all they really needed, was to know what the other was thinking.
He trusted that female classmate of his to always get on his case, because he knew she couldn't handle people who fell out from her own normalized view of society.
Trust was for the men who stumbled after lone girls in the dead of night, because everyone intrinsically knows how to regress into savagery. Along the same vein, he trusted the seasoned criminals to turn on their partners, because the clever ones always do. The cops who will never prioritize his vigilante-ass over civilians, the way his opponents always hesitate when they see the mask, etcetera, etcetera.
But those were all rudimentary proofs.
More than anything else, Alex trusted those who killed.
It was an inhuman act that defied all rationality, yet hidden deep within the irrationality, was logic.
'He was jealous of him, so that was all it took to pull the knife out.'
'She loathed her bully, so she reached out and pushed her in front of that bus.'
Not simple lust, and not simple greed. Rather, the desire to murder another. The choices made to make that happen. It was a line that could easily be read. There might be twists, turns, dead ends too, but it all came back to the same thing. They wanted to kill. They would kill. By any means necessary.
And, that did not just apply to human beings.
With animals it was even simpler, laughably so. When they were hungry, they killed. Driven into states of self-preservation, they killed. When a prey turns their back to them, showing insurmountable weakness, who could expect them to refrain?
The devious bundle of saws for teeth in front of him was no different.
A monster it may have been, the Juggernaut still possessed this trait.
So, much like the cornered rat, how could Alex fail to trust that it would go for the eyes, especially when the chance to do so had been literally presented to it on a golden platter?
Like a bitch in heat, it lunged for the lightning.
Because even here in a world so far off from his own, freaky ass monster or not, pieces of shit were still pieces of shit.
What Alex chose to do in response was swift.
"Sorry not sorry!"
"W-Wha—"
In the time it took for his hand to flick towards his belt and perform a very practiced action, he was already about-facing in the complete other direction, where he sent the sole of his boot crashing into the heavily armored torso of the girl that happened to be there. There was no way it managed to hurt her, or cause her any degree of pain, but he hadn't been trying to do so.
Her face lit up with palpable shock as she staggered backwards.
He had actually aimed for her stomach, but he failed to account for their height difference in time.
Nevertheless, the results still pleased him.
He ripped the tower shield from her now all too weakened grasp, and fortunately, since his timing hadn't been too off, in the very next moment his belt tugged, and that was the only warning he received before he was all but catapulted off his feet in the direction he wasn't looking.
As Alex whistled through the air at high speeds, he couldn't have been picky about which body part he had lassoed before doing so, but he supposed through years of untiring use, his aim was truer than it had any right to be. Greenie, that is, her slender waist, bucked irregularly to accommodate the steel wire securely wrapped around it, and then with the full brunt of his added weight.
She made a high pitched sound at the sudden unwilling motion her body was taking, and it would have been nice if she was sent stumbling towards him as a result, but he wasn't that fortunate. Not when she barely took a step to the side.
Alex had forgotten how stupidly heavily these parallel-world girls were.
It shouldn't matter, however, not when he was already on course to solve all the problems in one go.
Within moments, the remaining distance between them vanished, and because if there was anything he could do correctly these days, it was take a fall, he very VERY non-technically ducked into a roll, and before he knew it, his boots were skidding along the dirt kicking it up everywhere, the shield that had been held closely to his chest raised outward and upward quickly, where an immensely bright light was waiting, choosing that moment to flash from both somewhere and everywhere.
Hold on?
And.
It was only then that Alex realized how bad of an idea this was.
"Uh, why did I assume the shield would—"
An ungodly amount of energy slammed into the obtrusive buckler, and Alex swore he heard something crack... or several something's. He really hoped that was the shield.
Then, the ground saw fit to leave him.
Actually, it was him that left it.
Yes; similar to a magical-ass hit and run, diesel style, he was sent flying backwards, which he was forced to assume in the proximate seconds given how considerably difficult it was making use of his senses when everything was blurring together in about the trippy-est way possible.
Was he still spinning?
That was probably an affirmative in light of his stomach feeling like it was trying to combat one, two, three different home invasions, all at the same time.
And even though he had no idea how long it all lasted, his brain still at one point finally caught up with the fact that his body had stopped moving.
And, that an impressively high cavernous ceiling loomed above him, a sight that did not change even after blinking a few times.
It was hardly the time for it, but something his mother once said trickled into his hazy mind.
--If you can't trust four walls and a ceiling, you can't trust anything.
Of course immediately afterwards, she would start running after pigeons with a pocketknife.
Alex paused, feeling that was off for some reason.
Righttttttttttt...
Jared. He was thinking of Jared, the homeless guy under that highway, who wielded crack like it was his superpower or something. He wondered how that guy was doing.
But anyway, if he had the necessary cerebral brain fluid to worry about drugged up homeless men, that more than likely meant he had survived that clusterfuck of an attack, which he totally nailed by the way. "Don't know how I'm not dead... but I'll take it," Alex murmured with an incredulous lurch. "But why do I feel like I'm forgetting to do something?"
He suddenly heard a groan.
Or, maybe it was a moan? Sounded a little too soft for groan's more ungraceful connotation. He was going to settle for a dubious sounding snore. Yes. Also, what the hell was pressing into his not-not-hopefully-not-not broken ribs? Stiffly, Alex rolled his neck to look down, mask uncomfortably riding along his collarbone, and he saw what the problem was.
I swear this wasn't here before...
On a side note, he managed to recall what he had been forgetting.
Green hair filled his vision.
There was a body attached to the hair too, which was strange because he would have remembered volunteering to be someone else's cushion. Although... with the way gravity said 'fuck you', there was probably quite a few more things in the last minute that he wasn't going to remember.
Nevertheless, another soft groan-moan-snore came from the lightning-toting girl he had jumped in front of, which by the way he was never doing again as long as he lived.
Unless he was forced to.
...Which he probably would be.
Stupid quest screen and its dubious sounding objectives, making him save people like he was some upstanding individual.
Well, Alex could put aside the crisis of him being mistaken for a good person for later, even though it did give him chills.
Greenie was alive and that was all that mattered, because if she wasn't he was completely and utterly fucked.
Probably.
Allegedly.
He'd come back to that.
"Wakey, wakey, sleepyhead... your friends are still fighting. Time to get up, else they're all going to die," he said in the nicest voice he owned.
She stirred considerably, and her eyes opened, but they were bleary, still not completely lucid.
Fine by him.
Now he could try the approach that wasn't so boring. He reached out and started rubbing her hair softly. And just because, he brought his mouth closer to her totally-real-and-definitely-not-fake pointed ears. "If you don't get off me in three seconds, I'm going to do something strange to you. One, two, thr—"
She shot up like a demon possessed, and the look she gave him was so unbelievably flustered, that for a moment he feared she was going to pass out again with all that blood rushing to her face.
Alex mentally pleaded for her not too.
She was already touching all the wrong places, and even though he would normally be all too willing to say that out loud just to see a reaction, he was actually talking about his stomach, torso, ribs, did he mention his stomach, torso, and ribs? And any other place that was heavily bruised and quite possibly satisfying the definition of the word 'broken'.
Either way, thankfully, she didn't.
"S-S-S-S-S-S-Something s-s-strange?!" Instead, a particular expression stared at him, the kind of expression one made when they find out Mommy and Daddy weren't actually wrestling at one in the morning.
"You're still on top of me," he kindly informed her.
He doubted she could have scampered away faster if she tried. He would have been hurt if... well... no, actually. He couldn't think of any reason why that would hurt him. But for sentiment's sake, Alex would be hurt if he wasn't already trying to get a grasp on the situation.
He ignored the girl as he pushed himself to his feet.
More or less where they had been standing before, and a few even looking this way with wide eyes, several figures cast distinguishable silhouettes in the distance. There were still eleven of them, including little miss Greenie next to him, which meant his ticket wasn't at risk of being punched just yet.
Swell.
He then noticed the significantly larger figure looming behind them.
Fortunately, it was still trying to figure out how best to walk after Fantasy-C4 was shoved up its ass. ...Well, if its kindly staying still, how about I make its other eye—
Alex froze, reaching for something that just wasn't there.
His gift from Mr. Assassin was no longer over his shoulder. ...Right. His mind had been mainly on overdrive just a short while ago, but he remembered now. Ridding himself of excess weight was one of the first things he did before he ended up getting body slammed by magic and latching onto womanly hips... not necessarily in that order.
Anyway, his boom-boom stick.
He'd have to track the thing down before... before...
Alex sniffed the air.
Is something burning?
Just then, a small shriek came from beside him. He turned his head to find Greenie looking at him, expression aghast. When she pointed a shaky finger at him, rather, a part of him, his eyes fell to where she was indicating.
"Oh, hey."
His arm was on fire.
Well, not in every definition of the word.
His clothes were on fire, that is, the dwindling surface area of fabric that used to be a dapper looking sleeve. Damn. That was one of his favorite outfits too. Right, priorities. His elbow from what he could see, was scorched a nasty red, likely from a stray lightning bolt. He had thought he felt a sharp stinging back then.
On a side note, who knew the chance of getting struck by lightning was so high these days? Crazy.
"—s-sorry..."
Alex turned his head.
"Y-You're arm... because of me."
He looked at the girl strangely.
No, he purposely thought of her as strange. Was that why she looked about ready to cry? Well, that was kind of funny, and weird, but mostly funny, considering his reason for being in this situation at all was as far from noble as it could be.
She was about to feel so stupid.
"I think you're misunderstanding something here." Alex's mask tilted away as he began swatting at the flames, that is, before they could ruin the rest of his clothes. "Basically, if any of you girls die, I won't be able to go on living. It's that simple. Of course I'm going to shed a little blood to that end. Well actually it's probably been pints by now. Anyway, make sense?" he finished, already bored.
All the girl did was stare at him silently, and it lasted long enough to make him wonder if that would be enough for her to understand. Fortunately, her viridian eyes widened a second later. But? This was accompanied by a reaction that was a tad bit strange, or at least, even more strange than her others.
"O-Oh," Greenie uttered softly, her cheeks enveloped themselves in a familiar yet more pronounced dark hue as she frantically looked away from him.
"..."
Alex was well aware he was just staring at her.
Could... he take that to mean she was stunned by his duplicity?
He just conveyed the fact that his reason for helping concerned his own well-being, right? He just said he would literally die if he didn't, right?So why the hell was she looking at him like that? Shouldn't she be a little more, well, he didn't exactly know but, not good? Gaze estranged from his, arms tucked in front of her as if she didn't know what to do with them, she looked like some skittish little squirrel.
Women.
Weirdos. Every single one of them.
…
…
…
Ryuu did not need to be told what her face looked like.
Her grin, if the unsuitably poor expression even applied with how she was feeling, stretched at her face, to the point where it ached.
She was relieved.
Gods she was relieved.
There was close to a billion things she felt like saying, yet, just the same, if she opened her mouth, it was likely nothing would come out. She would not know how to truly speak of what she just saw, what she currently was seeing, and what words might be okay to use to best describe the palpable warmth gently strumming her entire being.
But even so, the flashes continued to appear in her mind:
Him moving before any of them, Celty's unknown yet known fate being determined one moment, but gone the next as he jumped in front of her, and whether he realized what Asta's shield was made out of, whether he realized he might have been dying alongside Celty but chose to try and save her anyway, and despite the fact that he had already told them about that monster's hidden trick, but not deciding to leave them to their justified folly, despite all of that, every bit of it, he—
Ryuu let out a shaky breath.
The time that felt frozen for her finally began moving again as she turned away from the two figures, masked male and green haired female, both alive and well in the distance. She also started the process of blinking away the copious amounts of moisture that had built up around her eyes without her say-so.
Again, there were a number of things she felt like saying. However, right now only one thing mattered.
A roar pierced the crisp air.
Across from her, despite its crippled state, the Juggernaut busied itself clambering to its feet, beginning to lumber forward. It didn't have the same fearsome speed as before, nor should it have its terrifying durability, but it likely didn't even care.
If it wanted to kill them, all it needed were those maddeningly sharp claws and teeth to do so. That's what it had to be thinking with that one singular eye that could only see red.
As if Ryuu would lay down and let it.
"Imbue the light of stardust and destroy the enemy—!"
If she wanted to move forward with everyone, this thing had to go. She would not disgrace herself further by failing, not again, and most certainly not at this crucial moment. So, glaring at the rampaging beast getting ever closer, that wanted nothing more than their bloody demise, Ryuu caught her rapidly diminishing spell by the hand just as it nearly faded into sepia. "Luminouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuus Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd!"
Her power exploded forth.
The familiar viridescent glows of her mana took flight all around her, instantaneously shooting forward at the black monster without pause. They rained down like a raging monsoon, colliding against the creature's form, enveloping it with the pure green glow of her magical power.
Her breathing rose in tempo.
Because there was no mighty explosion engulfing her vision like her spell was accustomed to doing, rather, the magic was met with resistance.
For the first time, Ryuu got to feel with her own body the jarring sensation of her mana being manipulated by an outside force. Even when she knew what could happen—what was likely going to happen—she couldn't say she was undaunted by the sight of that contrastingly pure blue light so effortlessly pushing back her crescent shaped barrage, threatening to send it in complete disarray.
Ryuu's teeth bit down hard, enough that she thought they might break. At the current moment, the mental strain of keeping her magic in place was no laughing matter. If her spell was like Celty's, one that expelled mana, this fleeting stalemate would have been unfeasible, impossible.
But her Luminous Wind was not something she threw so carelessly. It was controlled. Manipulating her mana to do as she wished took her utmost concentration. Even still, as her lime green constructs clashed with the seemingly impenetrable translucent barrier, she could feel her hold slipping.
This... what is this truly, a spell, a skill...?!
It was a terrifying prospect for a monster to possess such abilities, and more so, it was completely bone chilling to think that, had it not lost its eye, and had it not been significantly weakened by Lyra's explosive barrage, it would be even stronger than this. At that point, it wouldn't have been strange if they had all been killed instantly.
It wouldn't BE strange if they still met such a gruesome fate.
Perhaps even logic dictated such.
But that was why Ryuu shook her head, even as proof of her materializing exhaustion started to trickle down the side of her face.
Unacceptable.
If her power faltered here, if she allowed this monster to escape her grasp, it would be spitting on all the chances that had gotten them this far. It would be spitting on the many chances that one person in particular had given them, even if she still didn't have a clue as to why.
So she couldn't let it end here.
That was not the kind of justice she believed in, and more than that, that was not how she, Ryuu Lyon, wanted to leave things.
Without warning but welcome, something like a chill teased every bit of her body. No, not a chill. It was a heat, a hot vortex of flames that began to stoke and swirl within her innermost framework. This new energy might have been given kindling by the Elven forests in which she grew up, but they surely sparked into a raging inferno when the family she had made in Orario eclipsed everything else.
The family that deeply loved her, and that she loved in turn.
Their happiness, their smiles.
She couldn't let those people die.
And, if there was anything else...
There were still heartfelt words of gratitude she had not yet given.
So Ryuu thrust her hand out with force.
"LUVIA!"
Something snapped, like a thread that had finally reached the limit of its tension, and so too did the balls of lights in her command, trembling fiercely in place.
But they didn't fizzle out into nothingness.
Just the opposite in fact.
They grew brighter. The balls of light sought their brothers and sisters and joined together, growing larger and larger until their shine seemed to darken the surrounding area in contrast, and the beast standing near began to be completely dwarfed by their size.
Its reaction to the sudden emergence of power went unseen, just as the murky black body soon did.
This was not a new spell that had been created from nothing.
It was not the unpredictable breakdown of an Ignis Fatuus.
It was simply a new door being created, and she alone had the key.
Explode.
The door slammed open, and green light flashed dangerously before detonating with a deafening impact.
But, just before, and Ryuu swore she heard it, a single sound echoed through the stifling air. It was similar to the cracking of glass that had just reached its limit. The sight it accompanied couldn't be mistaken however, clearly seen before everything went white.
That otherworldly blue phenomenon, that which had nearly gleefully taken Celty away from them, was undeniably shattered into a million pieces, and the monster behind it...
It didn't even stand a chance.
The echoes of inhuman-like screams into the smoke-riddled air were the final vestiges of the Juggernaut's existence.
…
…
…
Head tilted and arms crossed, Alex stared at the gaping indentation of soil that had been created.
It was dead.
Scratch that, it had been fucking obliterated.
Whatever the business end of that lightshow had been facing, well, it sure as hell wasn't there anymore. He was also sure there was a joke about Hiroshima here too, but he just couldn't find it.
Anyway, he continued to stare.
If Alex was a lesser man, he would go into shock and have a panic attack. If he was a better man, he would be crying tears of appreciation at the sight. Well, he was in between there somewhere, probably, so he just nodded appreciatively.
It really was an impressive sight, after all.
What was previously a flat stretch of land with forest on all sides, was that, except the inner landscape wasn't so flat anymore. The pink haired girl had seen to that, bombing it to high hell, laughing as she did so.
Damn that girl, acting in a way that tugged at his nonexistent heartstrings.
But that wasn't all.
Blondie then tagged herself in and shot a tactical nuke out of her hands, because apparently that was possible, and then just like that, the several small craters were erased, a deeper, much wider one taking their place.
Alex's eyes tracked to said girl, idly wondering the terrifying thought that she could have done A WHOLE LOT worse than a knife in their previous brief bout of friendly fire.
But, and he wasn't sure if this was good news or bad news, summoning the green armada didn't look to be something she could do whenever she wanted—hence—why Blondie looked so dead on her feet. She even had to be supported by the one with red hair, little miss charisma.
And by way of their mouths moving, they looked to be having a conversation, and it wasn't hard to guess what about, not when basically all of them were sporting similar expressions. The relief was so palpable it probably could have manifested into some weird creature if it tried.
Actually, Alex probably shouldn't tempt fate like that.
Well, and he couldn't fault them for their joy.
Should be. They killed the big bad AND none of them kicked the bucket.
Sure, it might have been a bit touch and go in the beginning, but they eventually doubled down and carried the team, which was good because he wasn't liking his chances of doing it in their place. He would have had to get a lot more creative than he currently had the means for.
And speaking of 'means', he managed to once again affix one of them to his back.
If only serving as a way to stagger the frenzied fuck, the compact weapon had definitely been a total lifesaver. Alex would thank the person who gave it to him were that possible. But it wasn't. Mr. Assassin was likely dragging his handicapped self through prison at the moment.
Sucked to be him.
Although, he kind of wanted to take back his thanks.
The bastard had only packed three rounds in the damn thing. Seriously, overconfident much? What would he have done if a disturbingly stylish vigilante had knocked one of his shots into some nice-looking curtains—oh wait, that's actually what happened. In hindsight, Alex could have definitely prevented that from happening, but hindsight was a bitch, so no one listened to her anyway.
Moving on, one bullet missing, and one bullet entering a fleshy eyeball later, he only had one left.
Alex wondered if he could create more. He certainly knew enough about the inner workings of guns, but as for the chemical components that made bullets? He wasn't so sure.
It was something to think about.
Oh, two of the females suddenly started making their way over to him.
To be more specific, Red was helping the other along, Blondie still looking a little unsteady on her feet. And since the former apparently didn't know how to be anything other than positive and agreeable, the redhead gave him a chaste wave and grin as they continued to trudge forward. So while he expected that to some degree, he couldn't end up saying the same when the other girl mirrored her friend, smiling faintly.
Again, it was barely present given Blondie's state of exhaustion, but still, it was quite the difference between both the aggressive and docile modes he had seen her in. Not really knowing how to make heads or tails of it, Alex habitually tilted his head.
Don't get him wrong, he knew he had done the bare minimum to turn over the suspicious, hostile impression the group had of him before, and it only served his own ends to keep it that way.
Still though, it wasn't something he was used to facing.
On a good day, most people usually did not want to be near him, mask or not, even more so if they knew him prior. It was actually kind of funny, scratch that, it was undeniably funny, the reactions he would get. Like, what, did they think he was about to start kidnapping babies or something?
That's horrible.
What could he do with a captive baby?
Alex shrugged the thoughts off.
Blondie, Red, the lot of them too, they could be as jolly as they wanted, angry as they wanted, whatever as they wanted, towards him or anyone else, just so long as they weren't going off killing themselves. Though, that was something he didn't think he had to worry about... for the most part, his babysit-ees were pretty competent, even more so as a team.
Hell, if his usual stray civvies had been equipped with just half their coordination, life would have been a HELL of a lot easier back on Earth.
The number of times he's had to drag some crying, snot nosed princess out of a literal bullet storm, well, it was more than once, and that was already one too many. And unfortunately, his evil meter hadn't quite reached the point where he busted out popcorn to some twelve-year-old getting gunned down.
Alex might not have that thing called 'compassion' like everyone else, but he did believe that 'fair was fair'.
If those scumbags were wanting to dole out pain in the form of bullets, they should at least be prepared for some retaliation, right? Breaking near every bone in their body made sense, right? It was only natural to come to that conclusion. And, he supposed, safeguarding the scared shitless girl was the unintended side effect.
If nothing else, that was bonus points.
Well, who was keeping score, anyway?
That was a lie.
He was. He was always keeping score—kept him happy and sated.
Though...
His thoughts changed gears, and the reflection of that appeared yet again, promptly and without permission.
///
| Protect the Astraea Familia until they safely make it back to the surface. |
///
The system, whatever or whoever it was, seemed to assume his propensity to sometimes not be an asshole as a plus, which was quite frankly a leap in logic if he had ever seen one. Not only was it backwards, it was hilarious. He would still be laughing, even more so when he first saw the message, if this whole thing wasn't shaping out to be so... so...
"Tedious," Alex breathed out.
Still, he turned on a dime towards the two girls, still on the clock and all that. If nothing else, he could start the process of getting them the hell out of this unpredictable-ass area. And if they wanted to keep throwing game logic at him, maybe then he would be that much closer to being done with this stage.
Opening his mouth, Alex went to do just that.
Only he immediately closed it.
Behind them, the other girls seemed to be flocking over as well, also seemingly acknowledging the need for a group discussion. That was good, excellent even, but that wasn't what shut him up, nor was it the stray thought that the women looked no different from a box of color crayons, congregating all at once.
No, it wasn't that either. It was something completely different.
Shit had unilaterally just hit the fan.
And the only clue Alex received wasn't the system, nor was it anyone else's warning cry. It was his own instincts. An unrelenting chill, one that somehow felt both hot and cold at the same time, ran down the length of his spine, and his already halted feet further stilled in their tracks.
At once he turned towards the forest behind him.
Alex felt it, that ineffable something.
It was there, and it was different from the Juggernaut, when it eyed him like a piece of meat ready to be consumed. This was not the same. This stare felt more cunning, creepier, and unequivocally more flawed. He knew that stare. That kind of look.
It was human.
The tingle of excitement that came with it couldn't be faked, recreated, or explained in any other way. Though that feeling exploded into something like euphoria when Alex saw something small and gleaming come whistling out of the eerie darkness that was the forest.
In fact, he saw several such phenomena.
But the ever growing feeling inside him didn't abate, not when it got closer, and not even when the sickly green knife struck him dead center.
Shrill cries, panicked and surprised, echoed from all around him.
Alex fell to the ground in short order.