Story:Kings of Strife/Part 29

Part Twenty-Nine
A blade sliced through the air, and Vik ducked. Another one soon followed, and he slapped it away with the barrel of one of his pistols. As he did so, the knife that he had just dodged came flying back, cutting his shoulder as it grazed him. Hot air flared from his nostrils in frustration as he came to a kneel and glared at his enemies. This would be no easy battle.

In front of him stood the woman in the cerulean coat, and behind her was the tall clock tower of Zeta Academy. The skies above shone with a brilliant shade as the sun began to set, brushing the large meadows of the pseudo-city with fine reds, yellows, and pinks. As night had begun to creep into the bustling school, so too did the claws of danger and misfortune.

This woman represented all of that, Vik told himself as he jumped backwards and clenched his pistols’ grips with clammy palms. He constantly looked over his shoulder and around him for traps or unforeseen attacks. The man in the big red coat had retreated inside the clock tower when Vik was busy battling his companion, and there was no telling what sort of attack he could be preparing.

Vik noticed a blade shine in the light from the sun and hastily blocked it away with his pistol. The woman who threw the blade and promptly retrieved it smiled that carefree grin of hers and looked up at Vik from below her eyelashes. “I’m the one you’re fighting, big boy. Keep your eyes on me, or I’ll have to tear them out.” As she spoke, she had been swinging her knife on the black chains that wrapped on her arm and into her sleeve, and after speaking she threw them both at Vik again. He slapped them both away before moving to the side.

If he simply dodged the odd weapons, she was free to pull them back and cut or stab him. The stinging wounds on his back had proved that well enough. His only options for not getting slaughtered were to continue deflecting her attacks, hoping to tire her out, or to simply outrange her. His guns might not be the most accurate at a longer range, but they would definitely be harder to dodge than her attacks were to him. The matter of actually shooting at her was what gave Vik cause for hesitation, though. They had migrated to the clock tower as he wanted, and thus Vainia had at least been able to escape the spot where she would have been assassinated by the two mysterious warriors, but Vik doubted that every student who had been listening to her speech had left so quickly. If he were to let out gunshots here, he would no doubt be inciting mass panic and hysteria, and in these conditions it would be child’s play for the two would-be assassins to escape or even kill innocents.

Vik couldn’t let either of those situations happen. This was completely unshakable in his mind – he couldn’t live with more lives on his conscious. Not when he could have prevented them. Thus he was at an impasse, one that he pondered as hard as he could as he stalled and simply dodged the girl’s relentless attacks. His only offensive option would be to get in close and beat her down with his guns, but to get close to her would be to invite death from her unpredictable weapons.

“Aren’t you getting bored with this little dance, Mr. Muscles?” The woman spoke as if she could read his mind, and withdrew her weapons as soon as she had summoned them. Vik, breathing slightly hard from their swift encounter, bent over slightly with one of his hands at his shin and one poised to strike behind him. She simply laughed at his hesitation and adjusted the dark chains on her arms. “I know I am. You’ve had your fun, and we failed. Nolstuvainia Sestrum has escaped, all thanks to your heroics.” She laughed once again, and with a graceful twirl of her arms, meters and meters of chain dropped from her sleeves, all still attached to her arm. She had unwrapped the chains but kept them connected, Vik realized with rising dismay – in other words, she saw right through his plot to out-distance her.

“Now that the pretenses are over, it’s time to have some real fun. I don’t want to have to share you with my reinforcements,” she happily taunted. Her face had evolved from mindless mocking; now she was outright laughing at him, daring him to attack when the both of them knew that she could cut him to ribbons at the slightest misstep. Vik felt a shiver run down his spine for a second before his muscles tensed up with adrenaline.

Like hell he would be dying here. That was simply not an option.

He didn’t have a chance to reply, as she immediately launched both chains at him. Now exponentially longer than before, the chains flew just as fast but with an unpredictable trajectory, and Vik barely managed to dodge the flying knives. He remembered their return flight just as he hit the ground, and he pushed himself to the side with a titanic effort as the two knives stabbed themselves into the ground where he had just fell.

Now, he thought to himself. Now’s my chance! He kicked away the black chains that wrapped around the knives stuck into the ground, freeing the blades but causing the cerulean donned woman to be jerked to the side. He twirled his pistols in his hand with confidence before jumping into the air and preparing to whip them downwards right in her face. The two hits would be more than enough to knock her unconscious, at which time he could capture her and remove those pesky weapons. A surge of pride rushed through his veins as he felt his victory and saw her dismayed face.

When he was mere inches from her person, her grimace switched quickly to the disarming smirk she was known for, and Vik felt his blood run cold. Her smile instantly evolved into a scarring grin, and then to a laughing statement. “Now I’ve got you right where I want you!” She jerked her hands to the side, her fingers pulsating and twitching with excitement, and Vik twisted in the air with futile energy. She was right; there was no way for him to dodge in midair.

He managed to block one of the knives with a quickly twirled pistol, but there was no stopping the second one that pierced right into his shoulder. He cried out in pain and was thrown to the ground from the impact and his movement. It was then that he realized that the blade was ridged for extra agony. It worked.

The woman started to walk to him with that same smile of hers and twirled her free knife. “Oh, how short that was! Don’t tell me you’re finished already? You haven’t even shot one of your guns yet!” She laughed at Vik with scorn, and his mind raced for a solution to this conundrum as he tearfully struggled to pull the embedded blade from his shoulder’s flesh. “Oh, don’t tell me you’re the kind of man who unloads his shots when he least expects it? Hm, how tragic.” She looked down at him and noticed him struggling with the knife impaled into him. “Let me help you with that,” she whispered before yanking her arm backwards, forcefully ripping the blade out in the process. He screamed.

“You… You bitch,” Vik managed to grunt through gritted teeth. The weapon had hurt more coming out than it had going in, and his affected left hand struggled to find the strength necessary to hold onto his pistol. “What are you doing here? Who even are you?”

“Oh hoh, so you don’t remember me? I suppose that’s right; you never did see me trailing you last time. I bet you’d remember your dear friend P7, hm?” She smiled and continued to look down at him as she stomped a bare foot on his shoulder, crushing and gnashing the wound as blood squirted from it. He screamed, louder this time.

“Wait… What?” Vik’s muted blue eyes, searching and squinting from the pain of her torture, eventually widened as he realized what she was implying. “You’re saying you were with him…? Hasey?!” The woman only smiled deftly at his accusation, and continued to stomp on his shoulder. But a furious energy had entered Vik’s body know, a dwindling fire now rekindled with the reminder of the reason it existed. He growled and, ignoring all of the intense pain that the left side of his body was enduring, he pushed himself off the ground and smacked the woman in the side of the head with the pistol he held in his right hand. She cried out, and fell to the ground in front of him with a thud.

Vik now stood, breathing heavily and left arm almost limp, and kicked her in the abdomen. The attack sent her rolling a fair distance away, and he spit onto the grassy ground he was standing on. “Now I have you right where I want you. First things first…” He started walking towards the woman, a fierce passion he hadn’t previously known returning to him. As he did, she suddenly turned and threw her hands at him. Vik simply dodged both knives and shot at both of her arms with two consecutive shots from his right pistol. She screamed, and the knives weren’t able to be redirected at him. “…We get rid of your annoying weapons. Second,” he grumbled, “We get rid of your annoying life.” He was at her side now as she flopped on the ground, both arms paralyzed from the precise bullets shot right into her biceps, and dropped to the floor. His knee landed on the girl’s chest, smashing all of the wind out of her, and his right pistol stopped right on her forehead.

The courtyard, not even a mile behind them, was clearly in a rising panic from the sound of the gunshots. Nobody had started running over to where they were behind the large stage, but Vik could clearly hear people screaming and rushing away from the scene. That was something he couldn’t have avoided, he realized in hindsight. Taking account of the loud noise behind him, Vik moved his face very close to the girl’s, which was bleeding from the strike he had performed.

“Talk,” he muttered. “and you die swiftly. Resist…” With this, he moved the pistol’s barrel to aim at her shoulder, above where he had already shot her. “and you die slowly and painfully. Now I want you to answer in twenty words or less. Where is Hasey, and what is it that you Ouroboros assholes are planning to do?”

The woman in blue, who had ceased screaming and weeping in favor of silently writhing and frothing, finally opened her clenched eyes and smiled at Vik. “Why don’t you let him answer that for you?”

Vik’s eyes widened before he felt a ringing in his ears, as if an alarm were warning him of something terrible. He pushed himself off the woman in blue and rolled to the side, just quick enough to see that he had barely evaded a heavy strike from a large hammer that would have completely crushed his head into a flat, gory mess. Vik stayed where was, half kneeling and half on the ground, and could hardly believe what he had seen. At the same time, he knew that what he saw was the truth, and that fact scared him witless.

He would have recognized that hammer anywhere. The Black Knight stood in front of Vik, his hammer and axe resting in each of his hands. Unlike before, when he was jovial and loose when the two battled, the tall blond man now looked down at Vik with irritated eyes and a tight-lipped mouth that twitched into a frown.

“Damn, why did you two get here so fast?! I wanted to take him down!” The woman knight, now attempting to get up without the use of her arms, spat (literally) at the Black Knight’s back. He replied by turning and kicking her in her ribs, forcing her back to the ground with a groan.

“Shut up, V8. Maybe if ye weren’t so fucking useless, we wouldn’t have to be cleaning up your mess.” The disgusted words from the Black Knight both confirmed that the woman was also a member of Ouroboros and that he was not alone in reinforcing her. Vik began to shakily stand up as he looked around the area and over his shoulder. With the amount of people now running through the campus and the police sirens that were beginning to blare, he realized just how terrible his situation was becoming.

“And ye,” bellowed the Black Knight’s voice. Vik looked at him with a look of open fear. “are starting to be a pain in my ass. Ye just don’t know when to die, eh?” His scowl intensified, and Vik found himself moving backwards. He was completely unable to stand up to the man, even before they had started to fight. How pathetic.

No, Vik thought to himself. The time for hesitation had long passed. His right hand trembled as he raised his pistol towards the Knight in front of him – the left gun had long since been sheathed, due to his left hand being unsuitable for shooting and properly holding the gun with this level of damage – and aimed right at the Knight’s face. As always, he was not wearing a helmet, but his sleek and large black armor was as intimidating as ever, especially on the Knight’s bulky physique.

The blond man let a smile leak onto his lips despite himself at Vik’s feeble attempt to fight back. “Come on, now, I’ve told ye about this before, chap. It’s give and take – you give me your life, or I take it. And I’m not so sure if I want to accept your handouts, mate.” The Knight’s dripping accent was a heavy as ever. “Last time we met, you were a bit more fired up. Can ye show me that again, by chance? It’d be a lot more fun.” He started taking steps towards Vik, dropping his hammer from its resting place on his shoulder and swinging his axe around in the air to loosen up his muscles. It was clear what his intent was.

Vik closed his eyes, and for the first time in weeks, he saw all of his killed comrades in the darkness for the split second that he was immersed in it. Lieutenant Titon, Sergeant Fifero, Private Malenpaa, and Commander Hahto. Zettai Herohji, in its entirety, stared at him from beyond the graves. Their souls weighed heavily on him, so much so that his knees threatened to buckle when he felt their presence, and he knew that he wasn’t free from their influence. He never would be. As long as Ouroboros existed, he would be shackled by their memory, forced to carry the weight of the past, chained to the fact that he would relive their deaths again and again.

He opened his eyes and the grip on his gun stabilized. Now was the time to throw all of the endless pain away and free himself.

The Black Knight stopped walking and seemed to realize that something had changed in Vik’s eyes. He braced himself to attack, and raised both of his weapons, but Vik took the initiative and shot a full clip at the man. None of the bullets hit any vital spots, but they were enough to take the Black Knight off guard. He stumbled backwards, and in this moment, Vik rushed forward and jumped, kneeing the Knight in the chin with the momentum. The blond man yelped and began to slowly fall onto the ground.

Now Vik was feeling the same harnessed anger that burned through him when the female Knight mentioned Hasey, except this time the power was conscious and his focus was done on purpose. While the two were suspended in the air for less than a second, Vik kicked downwards with all his might, pushing the Knight to the ground quite painfully and propelling himself out of the range that he could be counterattacked. As the man landed ungracefully, Vik lighly came to a stop on the ground with a roll and immediately started reloading his pistol.

The black-haired soldier looked up for a second, his weapon now ready to be used in action again, only to find that the Black Knight had recovered with incredible speed and was now running towards him. The much taller man slashed and swung at Vik, who barely managed to escape the long-reaching attacks, and the two began a destructive dance that eventually moved the two back towards the stage. Unlike Vik, who had to completely focus on every move he was making and had to concentrate with all his might in order to not get crippled and killed, the Black Knight fought with recklessness and a loud mouth. He boasted constantly and the words managed to distract Vik enough that he was grazed with the axe more than a few times.

Finally Vik’s back was to the wall of the stage. The Knight jumped into the air with his hammer poised to rush downwards and crack Vik’s skull into pieces. Time seemed to slow for the former soldier as he saw everything; every movement the Knight made, every individual muscle of his body straining to give strength, every bead of sweat glistening in his blond beard. He wasn’t sure how, or why, but he swore he could see each of his comrades behind the man, growing farther and farther away the closer that the Knight got to landing his strike.

Enough was enough.

Vik summoned all the energy left in his body and twisted his body to the side. The hammer strike came crashing down an instant later, breaking apart the hard wood of the stage’s backdrop. Next came the axe, as expected, which Vik simply ducked under. Now he was beneath the Knight’s arms and free from counter-attack, at least for a few moments. But those few moments would prove to be all that Vik needed. He raised his gun right to the big man’s chest and rapidly fired all nine shots in the pistol’s cartridge. The force from the bullets at such extreme close range were enough to pierce right through the man’s battle armor, pushing him backwards with a pained scream.

As soon as it began, Vik’s burst of energy was gone. He felt all of his muscles, sore and throbbing, and his shoulder’s wound seemed to suddenly pulsate with bloody agony. The man struggled to breath and backed up against the wall of the stage, sweat shining on his forehead and his throat. The Knight wasn’t dead, he saw, but was instead slowly turning and pushing himself off the ground.

He cursed to himself silently as he staggered towards the back entrance of the stage. That last attack was likely all he had left in him. Vik’s body, still weak from both fights with the Lance Knight, was almost crying out to him in pain from the abuse it had taken and the stress he continued to put it through. He had managed to survive, somehow, but he could fight no longer.

That was when he realized that he had only fought half of the Knights who had come to Zeta. Choked sobs threatened to come from the former soldier as he pushed himself up the high stairs and finally land on the wooden floor of the curtained stage. He dragged himself to the side, out of view from the outside, and hid in front of the tall red curtain employed in the extravagant area. If he couldn’t fight, there was no point in staying out in the open, where he would no doubt be killed.

As he was climbing and crawling, Vik’s eyes had been tightly shut in order to better help him endure his pain. It came to him as a relief that he didn’t see his dead comrades this time, but to him, the pain was just the same and hadn’t changed a bit. Mental agony had only been replaced with its physical cohort. It didn’t help that what had manifested as a dull pain in his head when he fought the woman in blue was now a pulsing migraine behind his skull that threatened to drive him mad. But now, he opened his eyes and took his first few breathes, and was horrified at what he saw.

The screams that his gunshots had induced had long since passed, but Vik had simply chalked it up to the people in the courtyard running away in fear and mass panic. He had been wrong, he could see now – dead wrong. For sitting in front of him, turning to look at him through a gas mask worn on their face, was Hasey Troblum, better known as the Haze Knight. Vik would never forget that face, those slim yet toned features, and that midnight blue hair lazily combed backwards. And behind Hasey was the courtyard, above which a visible dark green misty fog hung and floated. On the ground were thousands of corpses, all from the students that had been susceptible to the gas and hadn’t been able to escape.

The Haze Knight removed his gas mask, revealing a crazed smile and narrowed eyes. “Well well,” he stated as he pushed himself to a stand from his nonchalant seat. “It’s been so long since we’ve met, dear Vik. Did you miss me?” A slim hand went down to a holster attached to the belt that held his baggy pants up. “I’ve missed you so, so much. Those people back there – oh, they forced me to do such horrible things! Like those people behind me… They’re all dead, and I was the one who killed them! Oh, can you imagine it?” He stalked closer to the exhausted soldier, who could do little more than sit and watch the boy advance. After some digging around, the Knight pulled out a wicked looking blade from his waist pouch. “And now they’re going to make me kill you, too. Can’t you save me? Can’t you?”

Vik trembled with pain and hatred. The Haze’s taunts enraged him, but there was no getting around his exhaustion. A sitting duck – that’s all Vik was. They both knew it, and there was nothing Vik could do to stop it. The Haze Knight licked his lips and dipped his long, serrated knife into another pouch on the other side of his hips, and when he pulled it out, the blade was dripping with red liquid. A poison, Vik thought to himself. ''So he can’t even make my death quick. Figures.''

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