Angel Devil Book 3, Chapter Sixteen
What else do you want? We got to the meat and potatoes of what I like to read / write: the ass-kicking. Laurel and Traya. Kiera and Lucy. James, Ratt, Judith. I mean, if you've been sitting here bored because it's been all talky and no action, especially since this is supposed to be the generic stadium / tournament based book. But you know what? Sometimes you just don't stick to convention and you try to do other things. And as much as I like writing the butt-kicking ackshun, I do the whole interaction between people thing pretty damn well too.
And yeah, this is kinda...generic for me. This is only the third time I've done a "everyone rushes to the same spot to save Hermes the Princess from trouble". I mean think about it. Hermes is the Princess, Laurel is Mario, Mel's Yoshi, and Ratt and James are the lovable sidekicks who crack jokes every so often in-between talking about hookers. It's all generic, it's all cliche - and yet you're reading it anyway. That's gotta say something for my talent, right?
So yeah. You know what's going on here. Let me bring it to your attention if you haven't noted it yet - Bleach became a major influence in-between book 2 and book 3. If you don't know what part of it I'm talking about in this chapter, then fuck man, go out and buy yourself the manga. Bcause you're only ruining it for yourself.
Lots of other things I'm proud of too. James and Ratt reacting to Judith. Judith being cool. Traya and Laurel showing you how high powered mana-workers roll. Archimagi Sofi. I mean, there's just so much good in this. It's easy to see why this ended up being one of the favorite Angel-Devil related things I've done yet!
Go on. Read it! Comment! Comment on the rest of the book! :)
Chapter Sixteen
Hermes grimaced, pain coursing from his shoulder and making the circuit all round his body, hearing the witch holding his wing down in the pit of chaos cackling with soft glee. "It's been so long since I got to torture someone so...interesting," she said. The pit of chaos below him wasn't the only thing freaking Hermes out right now.
"Enjoy it while you can bitch," he said through gritted teeth. "Help is on the way."
She laughed at that. "Oh ho, you think that there will be some sort of rescue? And what gives you such hope?”
From the inside of the tunnel they could hear alarms begin going off. "Faith in my sister," Hermes smirked.
But instead of instilling any shred of doubt in her, the women's eyes only seemed to laugh. "Let her try."
///
Laurel landed only a few feet away from Traya, their feet touching ground with a soft tap, their wings retracting back into their shoulders. She took a few quick looks around. "No entrance," she called over to the woman.
She was right; not even a vent for steam existed on the flat, featureless roof they had landed on. Up above Lockart was leading the Gospel through a hail of fire, the cannons still pounding away at his sides, the warships eager to watch him fall to the ground, pursuing him doggedly. She hoped he was okay.
Traya finished whatever it was that she had been doing and put her hand down on the ground below them. This seemed to please her for some reason, as she stood and smiled. "You know the saying Laurel. Where there is a will, there will always be a way." She reached out her sword arm and a black circle of void formed around it.
"Are you saying we blast our way in with mana?" Laurel asked, watching Traya with a curious eye.
Traya removed her hand from the spot, emerging with a sword from the now closed circle. It was long, black, bound with leather around the hilt and sheath. "We angels have far more subtler way of doing things." She caressed the blade like some sort of treasured pet. "Time for you to wake Smile, and do what must be done."
So that was Traya's sword. Even when they had trained together Laurel had never heard her utter the name once, and for good reason: supposedly the blade had belonged to one of the greatest mana workers in all of Heaven's history, a sword of great and terrible power gifted to Traya in her own trainee days and entrusted with. For all of its spoken power it seemed to be a very unassuming thing though, and any mana power it bore was masked well. Just like Traya, Laurel thought with a smirk.
"Ready?" Laurel nodded. "All right then." With a quick slash of her arm Smile was out and then back in its home, having cut a hole large enough for the both of them before Laurel could barely even blink. "Let's go."
Laurel followed her lead as Traya mounted Smile to her back and jumped down into the newly made rooftop entrance.
///
Kiera tossed aside the clumsy sword she'd tried defending herself with and sighed. Dion pat her on the shoulder. "It's all right. If it doesn't feel right, then it's not right and nothing we can do will change that." He looked down at the rows and piles of weapons laying on the ground by them. "I've just never had this much trouble placing a student with an arm before."
"That's supposed to make me feel better?" Kiera said, flopping down on the grass.
Dion shrugged. "Just saying is all." He looked over the piles again. "You know what? I've got another couple of bundles inside the house. I'll go get them."
"Maybe I fight like Melody?" Kiera called after him.
There was a laugh. "Maybe." He entered his house, leaving Kiera all by her lonesome.
Why they were training here instead of out in front of the house was beyond her. The back of his house was a series of small bumps and ridges with the path out toward the pools in the woods intersecting them. She'd have figured that it would have been smarter to use the flat ground out front. But like all things she had learned about Master Dion, he always had a method to his madness that she shouldn't question.
At least the peacefulness she'd felt in her should here before had remained. She had been afraid that that had been a symptom of being with Hermes, but thankfully it had proven not to be. Birds chirped, leaves rustled, the wind blew a soft kiss to her forehead. Such a fair difference from the chaos and torment of Hell -
"Hello sister dear," said a sultry voice that Kiera realized right from the first syllable.
Her knuckles tightened as she turned. "Hello Lucy."
Her sister was walking towards her, still covered head to toe in silk. Her eyes burned with playful sexual intensity, the luxurious black hair framed by the hood over her head The smile on her face showed teeth of white with small "lover's fangs" biting down on her bottom lip. She was designed to be a creature of sexual lust and want, a design that Kiera was all too familiar with; her own body still bore traces of the original design.
"I'm glad to see you too Kiera! It's been too long since our last time together!" Lucy continued, stopping a few feet from where Kiera sat on the grass.
"I bet you are."
"You sound so unhappy to see me! I would have figured you'd be glad to see a member of your family still alive. Especially since I was your best friend once upon a time..." her pouting lips curved into a menacing smirk.
Kiera stood. "Lucy is dead. You're just a fake."
Lucy feigned shock. "Such words! And for your own sister!" She pulled the fine cloak from her shoulders and grinned, making a point to gesture to the gleaming knives adorning the belt 'round her waist. Her dress ended just above the knees, white in color, with red slippers on her feet. "Such an un-pretty thing you have become! So far removed from your once noble roots!"
"Make yourself up any way you want, you're still a taint," Kiera said, clenching and un-clenching her fist.
"Heh. Brave little Kiera. So unaware of the power she and hers are up against. Tell me, do you know where your darling beau is right now?" Lucy drew one of the daggers and played it through her fingers. "As we speak, he is being tortured in a pool of the purest chaos, betrayed by one of his own team and now left all alone to die."
"You lie," Kiera snarled.
"Do I? I guess you'll just have to live to find out!" She charged towards Kiera, twirling daggers in her hands. Kiera tried to dodge, moving this way and that, slipping into whatever openings she could. This was different from the Finger; she wasn't a demon anymore but an angel trainee weakened and unused to whatever latent power she held.
Contrast that against Lucy, who had been training with her weapons and skills since she had ascended to demon-hood so many months ago. She had been strong then, at the Finger; now she was like unto a god against the now feeble Kiera.
"You can do better than this Kiera!" Lucy called as Kiera scrambled away from a black cloud of thrown daggers. "Don't make this fight any easier than it already is!" She was flying through the air, leaping branch to branch, as Kiera tried to think of something that she could do in return.
///
James and Ratt didn't even let their motorcycle come to a stop as they pulled up at the front entrance to the place Laurel had told them Hermes was being held in The armed guards at the front door wearing familiar armor with familiar insignia lent full credence to that assumption.
The Boys leapt from the bike and used the momentum gifted them to surprise the guards by landing atop them. Behind them the bike skittered and squealed to a stop, sliding along its side against the pavement.
Each gave the other the thumbs up before James kicked in the door, Ratt taking the time to collect the guns and ammunition the squashed former guards had been using. "Waste not want not," Ratt said. James nodded.
"Let's go find our friend," James said, taking his first steps inside the building. Ratt clambered up and onto his back.
"You're going to need more than just brute strength to get through there," said a voice.
Both turned, Ratt training the gun in the direction of the voice, James with his fists at the ready. Standing there watching them both was the apprentice maiden, Judith, her arms folded over her chest, a metal pole interwoven with her arms. "You're loud."
"It's how we work." James said. "I thought Hermes was none of the Prince's concern."
Judith shrugged. "Maybe."
"You probably just waited for it to be convenient for you to lend a hand," James said. "Still. You okay with working with two dregs like us?"
"Are we going to rescue the angel or stand here talking about it?"
"Point. Let's move then."
///
Traya and Laurel paused as they heard the first chorus of gunfire somewhere else in the complex. Laurel smiled at the sound. "That would be the Boys."
"Good. They'll give us the distraction we need," Traya nodded. "You still have to explain their friendship to your family to me you know."
Laurel smiled, thinking back to when she'd asked her brother the same thing. "It's complicated."
"Knowing that they're your brother's friends Laurel, I knew it would be," Traya nodded. They crept along quiet, darkened hallways, little hassled by any sort of security. Whatever use this building had was simple; the rooms they had come across had seemed little more than changing rooms. Traya was figuring that the place was some sort of holy place or temple, and that whomever was using it now never figured someone would come in through the roof.
"Or it's a trap and they're letting us get mired nice and deep," Laurel said. Traya could only shrug and continue on.
"Do you feel that?" Traya suddenly stopped her and asked.
Laurel stopped, concentrated a few seconds, then nodded. "Yeah. Three of them up ahead. One of them is Hermes!"
"Indeed." Traya straightened. "No more sneaking. If we can sense them, then they can sense us. We're expected."
"What do we do then? Charge?"
Traya shook her head. "No. We go in like angels. Brave and proud and terrible."
Mai clutched tight, Laurel could only nod. "Yeah.
///
Lucy dropped right before her from her perch in the treetops. Before Kiera could move she was seized by the collar of her shirt and held up. "See how mighty are the fallen. Falling in love with an angel? Renouncing your noble blood? Turning against your blood kin? And look what it has given you. Weakness!"
Against Kiera's feeble struggling she was still flung bodily through the air, backwards, towards Dion's house. She realized just a moment too late that she was going to go through the wall and that it was going to hurt. Timber and dust fell about her as she landed, then struggled and coughed, trying to get back on her feet.
Somewhere she could hear a voice, Dion's: "What the hell was that?" But there was something else too, some other voice that wasn't Dion's or Lucy's but -
"Pick me up." She didn't recognize the voice or see who it was saying it, but the urging was becoming stronger. "Pick me up!" it pleaded again. Kiera stumbled about on her knees, her hands feeling about the dusty room. Dion was pounding at something, so far away. She felt like she was swimming through murky depths, disconnected to the world in some strange way.
Her hand searched through piles of fallen weapons, cutting, stabbing or stubbing herself in so many ways. The voice continued to beg, now near screaming in her mind. Somewhere Lucy had finally come to finish the job she'd started; Kiera could hear her threatening her, but the words were unintelligible. She was desperate now, feeling death's cold breath harsh on the back of her neck -
Suddenly the world changed. Kiera no longer felt disconnected to the world. She was on her feet, clean, pain-free, standing in the middle of...nowhere. The sky was the ground and the ground was the sky, all of it white, empty. It was warm. Comfortably warm.
Kiera looked around, unsure of just where the hell she was now. This couldn't be Oblivion; she'd be in quote / un-quote "the worst pain imaginable" if she was. Here she just existed, but even the aches and pains of her normal day to day life were gone.
"Hello."
The phrase was uttered with no hint of malice, nor warmth, nor friendship. Kiera jumped, so sudden the word came, so unexpected. It was the same voice that had called to her before, but the begging tone to it was gone. Was it curiosity? She turned towards it.
The figure standing before her was a disheveled young asian girl in a torn, bloody white under-dress. Her figure was skeletal and wasted away, her hands calloused and burnt and marked with blood and soot. In her hands lay the sword that Dion had warned her away from. She stood, watching Kiera.
"You are Kiera?" the girl asked, though it sounded more like a declaration.
Wordless, she nodded.
"I have waited for you Kiera. Waited centuries for your return to me." The girl seemed to brighten; the white shirt-dress she wore seemed to lose some of the grime on it, along with a little of the blood.
Kiera blinked. Had she heard that right? "Waiting?"
The girl nodded. "You and I are bound Kiera; our souls are one. I am a part of your soul long since lost." Her hair was starting to regain some shine, and straightening and cleaning itself. "I am your sister."
Sister? "Lucy?"
The girl giggled. "No, though she is much like us, but bound through a different part of your fate."
"I still don't get it though. Sister?"
Her face brightened. The clothing she wore sparkled as the dress mended itself, turning into an under-garment for a robe. The robe was white too, with red ribbons about it. "Many years ago, a few reincarnations for you, you were my sister in the land the mortals call Japan. Our family was mystic sword-makers, suppliers of holy swords, swords for those that needed them, according to the soothsayings of the priests of our family. That is, until revenge was sought upon us for our craft." She breathed a sigh, her face beautiful and full now. "We fought bravely, but in the end, we failed. Our family was decimated, and it was by my own hand."
The girl, Kiera's once sister, began to cry. "It was not my fault though! The spirits had found me to be the weakest of us all and possessed me, using me as a tool to slaughter my own kin from within! Only by your hand was I stopped, but in doing so, you mortally wounded me." She stopped crying, sniffling now. "We knew where my soul would be bound once I drew my final breath, so we appealed to the gods for help. They told you to bind me into the last blade you had yet to finish, a long katana you had made as a test of your skills. This way I may atone for the evils I had done."
"How?" Kiera asked.
"When I appealed to the gods for you, they merely told me that when you became a girl named Kiera, I would fight by your side, against your own family."
"Against my own family?"
She nodded. "I am here to help you kill your family Kiera. Through you my soul may be cleansed."
Realization hit Kiera like a brick. So the blade truly was cursed, but not in the way anyone had imagined. Unable to stop herself, she began to laugh. It took a second before Kiera was able to regain herself. "I'm sorry. It's just...odd is all."
The girl nodded. "I understand Kiera, but you must trust me. Please?"
"You understand how odd I feel about accepting this story point blank from a sword, right?" Kiera asked.
"I hope that trust will be gained sister."
Kiera reached out and put her hand around the crimson sheath of the blade. "What is your name then, sister?"
"Naioko."
"You will fight by my side Naioko?"
"Until our death."
Kiera's hand lifted the sword and held it before her once sister. "Then yes sister, I accept you."
///
Lucy was still talking over her prone form, laying amid the rubble of Dion's collection room, casually striding forward, still playing with her knives. Kiera was sprawled unconscious, her hand clutched lightly around some katana. She stopped right above her and kicked her leg.
"Awake sister dear. I will have you awake before I kill you, your head bowed for a forgiveness from mistress that will never come." She smiled. "It will be a pleasing memory to give her."
Kiera stirred, groaning. Her fingers tightened around the katana. "Good. Good! Awake and see your fate!"
Her eyes opened. "No."
Lucy narrowed her eyes. "No?" Some force seemed to pulsate just then, knocking her back just a few steps. Kiera got to her knees then, her feet. She nodded.
"No."
Lucy took a step forward. "Bowed head or not, your life ends here."
"You are vain Lucy. You should have finished me when you had the chance." She held up the katana she had brought with her from the floor. "Now run while you can."
"You don't scare me."
One hand undid the sacred rope binding Naioko's handle to the sheath. The other slid the sheath from the long blade, revealing it after centuries of slumber. "My intent is not to scare you Lucinda. I intend to destroy you."
Lucy laughed again. "You're bluffing. Your body is ready to break."
"Was ready to break. Now things have changed." Kiera held the blade up and ready. "Let us see who the weaker person is."
The door crashed off of its hinges; Dion rushed in with his two revolvers waving, searching for a target. He stopped when he saw the two women standing there, inches away from ripping the other apart.
"Kiera?" He blinked. Then he spotted what blade she held. "Kiera!?"
Kiera turned her head and smiled. "Everything is fine Master Dion."
"Let's end this then sister dear," Lucy said, charging forward again, daggers at the ready. Instead of trying to defend herself in any way Kiera did as Lucy had, charging right back at her. This took Lucy by surprise, giving Kiera the chance to shove her backwards and out of the house. She cried out and fell backwards, hitting the ground outside.
Kiera followed her out, leaping out of the hole she'd made when she'd been forced through the wall, Naioko high above her head. With a cry she brought it down upon Lucy or tried to, she rolling just out of the way before the razor's edge even touched her. She twisted and swung, catching Kiera in her side. She cried out and punched down, hitting Lucy in the jaw and forcing her back.
Lucy was gasping for air, rubbing the bruise already forming on her face. "Where did this come from?"
Kiera smiled. "I found out that I'm not the only person fighting to atone for past sins."
Lucy snorted and gestured to the naked long katana in her sister's hand. "The sword?"
"Naioko," Kiera corrected her, "and yes."
"Trust in you to find a crutch to keep yourself going," she smirked, "me, then Hermes, now that."
Kiera's eyes narrowed. "I will not allow you to insult any of those people!" Again she dashed forward, swinging her new katana. Lucy dodged by bouncing up and against a tree, throwing knives behind her. Kiera knocked them aside with her bare hands, then ran for Lucy, still making her getaway. "Come back here!" she shouted, chasing her off of Dion's property and into the city of Vulcanus below.
And yeah, this is kinda...generic for me. This is only the third time I've done a "everyone rushes to the same spot to save Hermes the Princess from trouble". I mean think about it. Hermes is the Princess, Laurel is Mario, Mel's Yoshi, and Ratt and James are the lovable sidekicks who crack jokes every so often in-between talking about hookers. It's all generic, it's all cliche - and yet you're reading it anyway. That's gotta say something for my talent, right?
So yeah. You know what's going on here. Let me bring it to your attention if you haven't noted it yet - Bleach became a major influence in-between book 2 and book 3. If you don't know what part of it I'm talking about in this chapter, then fuck man, go out and buy yourself the manga. Bcause you're only ruining it for yourself.
Lots of other things I'm proud of too. James and Ratt reacting to Judith. Judith being cool. Traya and Laurel showing you how high powered mana-workers roll. Archimagi Sofi. I mean, there's just so much good in this. It's easy to see why this ended up being one of the favorite Angel-Devil related things I've done yet!
Go on. Read it! Comment! Comment on the rest of the book! :)
Chapter Sixteen
Hermes grimaced, pain coursing from his shoulder and making the circuit all round his body, hearing the witch holding his wing down in the pit of chaos cackling with soft glee. "It's been so long since I got to torture someone so...interesting," she said. The pit of chaos below him wasn't the only thing freaking Hermes out right now.
"Enjoy it while you can bitch," he said through gritted teeth. "Help is on the way."
She laughed at that. "Oh ho, you think that there will be some sort of rescue? And what gives you such hope?”
From the inside of the tunnel they could hear alarms begin going off. "Faith in my sister," Hermes smirked.
But instead of instilling any shred of doubt in her, the women's eyes only seemed to laugh. "Let her try."
///
Laurel landed only a few feet away from Traya, their feet touching ground with a soft tap, their wings retracting back into their shoulders. She took a few quick looks around. "No entrance," she called over to the woman.
She was right; not even a vent for steam existed on the flat, featureless roof they had landed on. Up above Lockart was leading the Gospel through a hail of fire, the cannons still pounding away at his sides, the warships eager to watch him fall to the ground, pursuing him doggedly. She hoped he was okay.
Traya finished whatever it was that she had been doing and put her hand down on the ground below them. This seemed to please her for some reason, as she stood and smiled. "You know the saying Laurel. Where there is a will, there will always be a way." She reached out her sword arm and a black circle of void formed around it.
"Are you saying we blast our way in with mana?" Laurel asked, watching Traya with a curious eye.
Traya removed her hand from the spot, emerging with a sword from the now closed circle. It was long, black, bound with leather around the hilt and sheath. "We angels have far more subtler way of doing things." She caressed the blade like some sort of treasured pet. "Time for you to wake Smile, and do what must be done."
So that was Traya's sword. Even when they had trained together Laurel had never heard her utter the name once, and for good reason: supposedly the blade had belonged to one of the greatest mana workers in all of Heaven's history, a sword of great and terrible power gifted to Traya in her own trainee days and entrusted with. For all of its spoken power it seemed to be a very unassuming thing though, and any mana power it bore was masked well. Just like Traya, Laurel thought with a smirk.
"Ready?" Laurel nodded. "All right then." With a quick slash of her arm Smile was out and then back in its home, having cut a hole large enough for the both of them before Laurel could barely even blink. "Let's go."
Laurel followed her lead as Traya mounted Smile to her back and jumped down into the newly made rooftop entrance.
///
Kiera tossed aside the clumsy sword she'd tried defending herself with and sighed. Dion pat her on the shoulder. "It's all right. If it doesn't feel right, then it's not right and nothing we can do will change that." He looked down at the rows and piles of weapons laying on the ground by them. "I've just never had this much trouble placing a student with an arm before."
"That's supposed to make me feel better?" Kiera said, flopping down on the grass.
Dion shrugged. "Just saying is all." He looked over the piles again. "You know what? I've got another couple of bundles inside the house. I'll go get them."
"Maybe I fight like Melody?" Kiera called after him.
There was a laugh. "Maybe." He entered his house, leaving Kiera all by her lonesome.
Why they were training here instead of out in front of the house was beyond her. The back of his house was a series of small bumps and ridges with the path out toward the pools in the woods intersecting them. She'd have figured that it would have been smarter to use the flat ground out front. But like all things she had learned about Master Dion, he always had a method to his madness that she shouldn't question.
At least the peacefulness she'd felt in her should here before had remained. She had been afraid that that had been a symptom of being with Hermes, but thankfully it had proven not to be. Birds chirped, leaves rustled, the wind blew a soft kiss to her forehead. Such a fair difference from the chaos and torment of Hell -
"Hello sister dear," said a sultry voice that Kiera realized right from the first syllable.
Her knuckles tightened as she turned. "Hello Lucy."
Her sister was walking towards her, still covered head to toe in silk. Her eyes burned with playful sexual intensity, the luxurious black hair framed by the hood over her head The smile on her face showed teeth of white with small "lover's fangs" biting down on her bottom lip. She was designed to be a creature of sexual lust and want, a design that Kiera was all too familiar with; her own body still bore traces of the original design.
"I'm glad to see you too Kiera! It's been too long since our last time together!" Lucy continued, stopping a few feet from where Kiera sat on the grass.
"I bet you are."
"You sound so unhappy to see me! I would have figured you'd be glad to see a member of your family still alive. Especially since I was your best friend once upon a time..." her pouting lips curved into a menacing smirk.
Kiera stood. "Lucy is dead. You're just a fake."
Lucy feigned shock. "Such words! And for your own sister!" She pulled the fine cloak from her shoulders and grinned, making a point to gesture to the gleaming knives adorning the belt 'round her waist. Her dress ended just above the knees, white in color, with red slippers on her feet. "Such an un-pretty thing you have become! So far removed from your once noble roots!"
"Make yourself up any way you want, you're still a taint," Kiera said, clenching and un-clenching her fist.
"Heh. Brave little Kiera. So unaware of the power she and hers are up against. Tell me, do you know where your darling beau is right now?" Lucy drew one of the daggers and played it through her fingers. "As we speak, he is being tortured in a pool of the purest chaos, betrayed by one of his own team and now left all alone to die."
"You lie," Kiera snarled.
"Do I? I guess you'll just have to live to find out!" She charged towards Kiera, twirling daggers in her hands. Kiera tried to dodge, moving this way and that, slipping into whatever openings she could. This was different from the Finger; she wasn't a demon anymore but an angel trainee weakened and unused to whatever latent power she held.
Contrast that against Lucy, who had been training with her weapons and skills since she had ascended to demon-hood so many months ago. She had been strong then, at the Finger; now she was like unto a god against the now feeble Kiera.
"You can do better than this Kiera!" Lucy called as Kiera scrambled away from a black cloud of thrown daggers. "Don't make this fight any easier than it already is!" She was flying through the air, leaping branch to branch, as Kiera tried to think of something that she could do in return.
///
James and Ratt didn't even let their motorcycle come to a stop as they pulled up at the front entrance to the place Laurel had told them Hermes was being held in The armed guards at the front door wearing familiar armor with familiar insignia lent full credence to that assumption.
The Boys leapt from the bike and used the momentum gifted them to surprise the guards by landing atop them. Behind them the bike skittered and squealed to a stop, sliding along its side against the pavement.
Each gave the other the thumbs up before James kicked in the door, Ratt taking the time to collect the guns and ammunition the squashed former guards had been using. "Waste not want not," Ratt said. James nodded.
"Let's go find our friend," James said, taking his first steps inside the building. Ratt clambered up and onto his back.
"You're going to need more than just brute strength to get through there," said a voice.
Both turned, Ratt training the gun in the direction of the voice, James with his fists at the ready. Standing there watching them both was the apprentice maiden, Judith, her arms folded over her chest, a metal pole interwoven with her arms. "You're loud."
"It's how we work." James said. "I thought Hermes was none of the Prince's concern."
Judith shrugged. "Maybe."
"You probably just waited for it to be convenient for you to lend a hand," James said. "Still. You okay with working with two dregs like us?"
"Are we going to rescue the angel or stand here talking about it?"
"Point. Let's move then."
///
Traya and Laurel paused as they heard the first chorus of gunfire somewhere else in the complex. Laurel smiled at the sound. "That would be the Boys."
"Good. They'll give us the distraction we need," Traya nodded. "You still have to explain their friendship to your family to me you know."
Laurel smiled, thinking back to when she'd asked her brother the same thing. "It's complicated."
"Knowing that they're your brother's friends Laurel, I knew it would be," Traya nodded. They crept along quiet, darkened hallways, little hassled by any sort of security. Whatever use this building had was simple; the rooms they had come across had seemed little more than changing rooms. Traya was figuring that the place was some sort of holy place or temple, and that whomever was using it now never figured someone would come in through the roof.
"Or it's a trap and they're letting us get mired nice and deep," Laurel said. Traya could only shrug and continue on.
"Do you feel that?" Traya suddenly stopped her and asked.
Laurel stopped, concentrated a few seconds, then nodded. "Yeah. Three of them up ahead. One of them is Hermes!"
"Indeed." Traya straightened. "No more sneaking. If we can sense them, then they can sense us. We're expected."
"What do we do then? Charge?"
Traya shook her head. "No. We go in like angels. Brave and proud and terrible."
Mai clutched tight, Laurel could only nod. "Yeah.
///
Lucy dropped right before her from her perch in the treetops. Before Kiera could move she was seized by the collar of her shirt and held up. "See how mighty are the fallen. Falling in love with an angel? Renouncing your noble blood? Turning against your blood kin? And look what it has given you. Weakness!"
Against Kiera's feeble struggling she was still flung bodily through the air, backwards, towards Dion's house. She realized just a moment too late that she was going to go through the wall and that it was going to hurt. Timber and dust fell about her as she landed, then struggled and coughed, trying to get back on her feet.
Somewhere she could hear a voice, Dion's: "What the hell was that?" But there was something else too, some other voice that wasn't Dion's or Lucy's but -
"Pick me up." She didn't recognize the voice or see who it was saying it, but the urging was becoming stronger. "Pick me up!" it pleaded again. Kiera stumbled about on her knees, her hands feeling about the dusty room. Dion was pounding at something, so far away. She felt like she was swimming through murky depths, disconnected to the world in some strange way.
Her hand searched through piles of fallen weapons, cutting, stabbing or stubbing herself in so many ways. The voice continued to beg, now near screaming in her mind. Somewhere Lucy had finally come to finish the job she'd started; Kiera could hear her threatening her, but the words were unintelligible. She was desperate now, feeling death's cold breath harsh on the back of her neck -
Suddenly the world changed. Kiera no longer felt disconnected to the world. She was on her feet, clean, pain-free, standing in the middle of...nowhere. The sky was the ground and the ground was the sky, all of it white, empty. It was warm. Comfortably warm.
Kiera looked around, unsure of just where the hell she was now. This couldn't be Oblivion; she'd be in quote / un-quote "the worst pain imaginable" if she was. Here she just existed, but even the aches and pains of her normal day to day life were gone.
"Hello."
The phrase was uttered with no hint of malice, nor warmth, nor friendship. Kiera jumped, so sudden the word came, so unexpected. It was the same voice that had called to her before, but the begging tone to it was gone. Was it curiosity? She turned towards it.
The figure standing before her was a disheveled young asian girl in a torn, bloody white under-dress. Her figure was skeletal and wasted away, her hands calloused and burnt and marked with blood and soot. In her hands lay the sword that Dion had warned her away from. She stood, watching Kiera.
"You are Kiera?" the girl asked, though it sounded more like a declaration.
Wordless, she nodded.
"I have waited for you Kiera. Waited centuries for your return to me." The girl seemed to brighten; the white shirt-dress she wore seemed to lose some of the grime on it, along with a little of the blood.
Kiera blinked. Had she heard that right? "Waiting?"
The girl nodded. "You and I are bound Kiera; our souls are one. I am a part of your soul long since lost." Her hair was starting to regain some shine, and straightening and cleaning itself. "I am your sister."
Sister? "Lucy?"
The girl giggled. "No, though she is much like us, but bound through a different part of your fate."
"I still don't get it though. Sister?"
Her face brightened. The clothing she wore sparkled as the dress mended itself, turning into an under-garment for a robe. The robe was white too, with red ribbons about it. "Many years ago, a few reincarnations for you, you were my sister in the land the mortals call Japan. Our family was mystic sword-makers, suppliers of holy swords, swords for those that needed them, according to the soothsayings of the priests of our family. That is, until revenge was sought upon us for our craft." She breathed a sigh, her face beautiful and full now. "We fought bravely, but in the end, we failed. Our family was decimated, and it was by my own hand."
The girl, Kiera's once sister, began to cry. "It was not my fault though! The spirits had found me to be the weakest of us all and possessed me, using me as a tool to slaughter my own kin from within! Only by your hand was I stopped, but in doing so, you mortally wounded me." She stopped crying, sniffling now. "We knew where my soul would be bound once I drew my final breath, so we appealed to the gods for help. They told you to bind me into the last blade you had yet to finish, a long katana you had made as a test of your skills. This way I may atone for the evils I had done."
"How?" Kiera asked.
"When I appealed to the gods for you, they merely told me that when you became a girl named Kiera, I would fight by your side, against your own family."
"Against my own family?"
She nodded. "I am here to help you kill your family Kiera. Through you my soul may be cleansed."
Realization hit Kiera like a brick. So the blade truly was cursed, but not in the way anyone had imagined. Unable to stop herself, she began to laugh. It took a second before Kiera was able to regain herself. "I'm sorry. It's just...odd is all."
The girl nodded. "I understand Kiera, but you must trust me. Please?"
"You understand how odd I feel about accepting this story point blank from a sword, right?" Kiera asked.
"I hope that trust will be gained sister."
Kiera reached out and put her hand around the crimson sheath of the blade. "What is your name then, sister?"
"Naioko."
"You will fight by my side Naioko?"
"Until our death."
Kiera's hand lifted the sword and held it before her once sister. "Then yes sister, I accept you."
///
Lucy was still talking over her prone form, laying amid the rubble of Dion's collection room, casually striding forward, still playing with her knives. Kiera was sprawled unconscious, her hand clutched lightly around some katana. She stopped right above her and kicked her leg.
"Awake sister dear. I will have you awake before I kill you, your head bowed for a forgiveness from mistress that will never come." She smiled. "It will be a pleasing memory to give her."
Kiera stirred, groaning. Her fingers tightened around the katana. "Good. Good! Awake and see your fate!"
Her eyes opened. "No."
Lucy narrowed her eyes. "No?" Some force seemed to pulsate just then, knocking her back just a few steps. Kiera got to her knees then, her feet. She nodded.
"No."
Lucy took a step forward. "Bowed head or not, your life ends here."
"You are vain Lucy. You should have finished me when you had the chance." She held up the katana she had brought with her from the floor. "Now run while you can."
"You don't scare me."
One hand undid the sacred rope binding Naioko's handle to the sheath. The other slid the sheath from the long blade, revealing it after centuries of slumber. "My intent is not to scare you Lucinda. I intend to destroy you."
Lucy laughed again. "You're bluffing. Your body is ready to break."
"Was ready to break. Now things have changed." Kiera held the blade up and ready. "Let us see who the weaker person is."
The door crashed off of its hinges; Dion rushed in with his two revolvers waving, searching for a target. He stopped when he saw the two women standing there, inches away from ripping the other apart.
"Kiera?" He blinked. Then he spotted what blade she held. "Kiera!?"
Kiera turned her head and smiled. "Everything is fine Master Dion."
"Let's end this then sister dear," Lucy said, charging forward again, daggers at the ready. Instead of trying to defend herself in any way Kiera did as Lucy had, charging right back at her. This took Lucy by surprise, giving Kiera the chance to shove her backwards and out of the house. She cried out and fell backwards, hitting the ground outside.
Kiera followed her out, leaping out of the hole she'd made when she'd been forced through the wall, Naioko high above her head. With a cry she brought it down upon Lucy or tried to, she rolling just out of the way before the razor's edge even touched her. She twisted and swung, catching Kiera in her side. She cried out and punched down, hitting Lucy in the jaw and forcing her back.
Lucy was gasping for air, rubbing the bruise already forming on her face. "Where did this come from?"
Kiera smiled. "I found out that I'm not the only person fighting to atone for past sins."
Lucy snorted and gestured to the naked long katana in her sister's hand. "The sword?"
"Naioko," Kiera corrected her, "and yes."
"Trust in you to find a crutch to keep yourself going," she smirked, "me, then Hermes, now that."
Kiera's eyes narrowed. "I will not allow you to insult any of those people!" Again she dashed forward, swinging her new katana. Lucy dodged by bouncing up and against a tree, throwing knives behind her. Kiera knocked them aside with her bare hands, then ran for Lucy, still making her getaway. "Come back here!" she shouted, chasing her off of Dion's property and into the city of Vulcanus below.