Chapter Fifteen

 

“Oh no you don’t,” Erza said. “Not here.”

I stood straight up. “But you said--”

“Outside,” she pointed. “And far away from here. Take Rose, Lynx, and Adriel with you.”

“Vulcon--”

“Stays with me,” she said. “He’ll be useless with that Anthroman person in your fight anyway.”

Erza snatched Vulcon away from me and those assigned to me followed me and the Nobles outside. Grim Guardian turned around and faced us.

“Where d’ya want yer final restin’ place ta be?”

“I’m sorry, what?” Adriel asked.

“Where do you want to die?” Dr. Man clarified. “We’re more so asking Amaia. You know you don’t have to get involved further since we have what we want?” 

“Wow, you’re really that confident in your abilities?” Rose questioned.

“I am.”

“Let’s test that, fucker,” Rose said. Before she even finished her sentence, a rainbow portal opened up behind her. A breeze of cold air blasted us. I peered through the portal and saw bright white. It was snowing. 

“Where, uh…where you taking us?” Adriel asked.

“A mountaintop far from here,” Rose explained. “No people. No fines for causing destruction. A place to go all out, if you will.”

“They’ll never find yer body,” Grim Guardian muttered. He was the first to step through though and the only one, as Rose closed the portal. 

“Nice try,” Dr. Man said, re-opening the portal to the exact location. Rose glared at him.

“How did you--”

“Simple reversal spell. Nothing to it really,” Dr. Man said, gesturing towards the mountaintop. We funneled through and Rose closed the portal on the other side. We lined up next to our teammates: Me, Rose, Adriel, and Lynx across from Dr. Man, Grim Guardian, and Anthroman. 

Without warning, Adriel shot a bolt of lightning from his fingertips directly at Anthroman, in hopes of killing him, but with inhuman speed, Dr. Man created a shield hex and absorbed the bolt and created another to shoot the same lightning back at Adriel. The Fractional Angel let the bolt hit him and he easily regenerated from the damage. 

Rose and Lynx looked at him. He shrugged. “Worth a shot.”

Grim Guardian was the first to charge at us, shield raised. I darted my eyes at Anthroman, who was being protected by Dr. Man’s absorbing hex. Lynx stepped in front of the three of us, took out a deck of cards and tossed a joker card at Grim Guardian’s shield. As soon as it made contact, it exploded and the force from the explosion sent the Noble flying off the edge of the mountain. Dr. Man didn’t react as Grim Guardian was easily lifted back to the top by way of another hex. 

“I should thank you for bringing us to the perfect place, Rose,” I said, getting sick of Dr. Man, who was their entire team. I crouched low to the snowy ground and the snow began to spin around me. As soon as Anthroman saw this, he dashed at me, still being protected by the hex. Rose’s eyes flashed yellow and she conjured a dragon made of light and sent it flying at Anthroman. The Noble flipped in the air, dodging the dragon’s divebomb and continued making his beeline for me. As Rose brought the dragon back around and Adriel stepped in front of me readying his scythe, Grim Guardian tossed his shield from where he stood on the hex. Instead of deflecting the shield, he shot lightning out at it and with the magnetic connection, attempted to send it off the mountain.

However, their leader created a portal where it was falling and Grim Guardian managed to retain it. I crafted a dome of ice around my three teammates and used the rest of the snow on the mountaintop to create ice shards, sending them out in every direction. 

Lynx looked at Rose. “While they’re distracted!” Rose nodded and created a portal underneath the two of them. I lowered the ice dome and Adriel sent streams of lightning at the three of them. Dr. Man was able to deflect the shards and lightning, but while he was distracted, Rose appeared from behind him and drew her pistols, unloading a clip at the back of Dr. Man’s head. A portal appeared from behind his head and behind Rose. Her own enhanced bullets ended up harming her. As she fell, she created portals for Lynx to jump through--tossing cards at Anthroman and Grim Guardian--before she created a portal underneath herself and landed back on the mountain. 

Lynx connected a punch to Anthroman’s punch, and her strength ended up shattering the bones in his hand. He cried out in pain and took a step back. 

“I learned that you received the serum. That shouldn’t have happened!” he shouted. Lynx grinned. 

“I got an earlier version!”

Grim Guardian charged at Adriel and me as Dr. Man manipulated the clouds above to swirl. He swung his shield at me. He was slow. Predictable. I somersaulted out of the way as Adriel stepped forward, swiping his scythe upward. The metals clanged against each other. I crafted a black icicle and attempted to stab it through Grim Guardian's skin, or at least get it to deteriorate his body. But as soon as it connected to his rib it shattered and none of the shards stuck. 

I glanced over at Dr. Man, who was focused on keeping hexes up to protect Anthroman from Lynx’s punches and kicks. She pushed harder with her combo. With her style of fighting, every hit flowed into the next and it ended when she went from a roundhouse kick into a haymaker. The haymaker shattered Dr. Man’s hex and the impact dazed the magic Noble. Anthroman tried to counter with his own punch, but I swiftly flicked an icicle into his elbow crevice, which stopped his attack as Lynx swung with her other fist connecting to the negating Noble’s nose. 

I saw it in slow motion. His nose was pushed inward, ripples from the impact wavered through his skin, a few teeth went flying. As the punch continued to mess up his face further, I was curious as to how he could survive her super punch. My question was immediately answered as I saw the skin and flesh from the bottom of his head tear from his neck as Lynx decapitated the Noble, sending his head flying off the mountain and into the snowy valleys below. 

“Guy!” Grim Guardian yelled.

Dr. Man gritted his teeth as he regained his composure. “Shit.”

As Adriel struck Grim Guardian’s shield with strength that sent the Noble back in front of Dr. Man, Dr. Man finished what he was doing with the clouds and summoned a lightning storm. 

“Get your asses over here,” Adriel demanded as he stood over a rising Rose. Her wounds were still healing from her own bullets. I used what snow remained and froze it over to make my way to the living lightning rod that was Adriel. Lynx wasn’t so lucky. 

She had all the superhuman enhancements one could dream of, but she wasn’t fast enough to dodge lightning. I was told her body was quite durable, but that was only for physical damage, mainly on the surface or her body. The lightning Dr. Man called struck her on the top of her white hair and surged through every nerve ending in her body, repeatedly until she dropped dead. 

Rose saw this. As Adriel continued to absorb the lightning strikes for us, light energy flowed from Rose’s gun barrels, her recreated dragon, and her yellow--now glowing--eyes. She, now without creating a portal, teleported behind Dr. Man and tried the same trick she did before. The magic Noble opened another portal behind his own head in the nick of time and behind Rose. Instead of sending bullets through it, she sent a beam of energy from her Dragon through it. And as the beam approached her back…it…phased through her. The after image of her flickered as the real her was unloading clips at Grim Guardian. 

The beam did end up hitting Dr. Man. And to keep him down for long enough, I created an ice wall to block him off. As I kept an eye on Dr. Man, Adriel joined Rose as she continued firing at Grim Guardian. He was shielding himself from the stronger-than-normal bullets, with a few getting by and nicking him. Adriel hop-stepped and sent his scythe into Grim Guardian’s spine, lifting him up in the process. Adriel’s eyes glowed purple as he sent strikes through Grim Guardian’s body, before Rose teleported onto the shield Noble’s chest and sent a clip into his throat, then forehead, killing him.

Dr. Man broke through the ice wall to see his other comrade dead and leaking his blood into the snow.

“Useless!” he said. Not the response I was expecting. “It was idiotic of her to team us up!”

I had an idea of whom he was referring to. He placed his palms on the snow and the flakes swirled swiftly to form a snow golem. It roared at us and prepared to attack, crafting a ball of snow from what was around. 

Rose not only let her dragon fire a beam at the snowball it was trying to throw, but created a flock of eagles that dove at the golem, exploding as they made contact, blowing chunks off the snow golem bit by bit, as Adriel flung his scythe at its neck. It seemed to slice clean through and make its way back into its owner’s hands. 

The golem, now visibly angry, tried to charge at us with what little body it had left, but it stopped as violet lightning surged from it’s neck and caused its head to explode. Its body collapsed and revealed a terrified Dr. Man behind it. 

“Keep in mind, he can still teleport away,” Adriel said. Not on my watch. I held my palms out and froze the snow beneath his feet, freezing him to the mountaintop. He tried to take flight, but couldn’t break free of the ice. Rose fired two bullets into his kneecaps, dropping him to his knees. 

“NOT YET!” Dr. Man shouted, slamming his palms into the mountain. When he did this, it trembled and shook. It cracked and separated as whatever he did caused the mountain to topple. The ground beneath him shattered, freeing him from the ice I trapped his feet in. Not needing the use of his legs in freefall, he floated around us sending fireballs, lightning bolts, and icicles at us. He had leveled the playing field.

“Can’t either of you fly?!” I shouted as I created an ice slide for myself. I couldn’t focus on creating the ice slide and attacking Dr. Man. Rose ignored me and sent Lynx’s falling body back to The Bloodbath through a portal. 

“Nope. Guess we shoulda mentioned that on our applications,” Adriel shouted, trying to get his body to fall upright. Since I could follow the ice slide and slide down comfortably from where I was creating the ice, I would try to save them. More so Adriel than Rose. And as I had this thought, Rose began teleporting around the crumbling debris firing her pistols off at the hero that was absorbing the bullets with his hexes and trying to continue shooting elemental objects at her. 

I got the ice slide near Adriel and his body nearly cracked it. He looked up and smiled, about to thank me when a rock slammed the ice next to him and shattered the ice, causing him to continue to plummet. 

Over the next few seconds the same thing continued to happen repeatedly it seemed, with Rose battling it out with Dr. Man and me trying to catch the falling Adriel amidst the debris, until the ground was within view. I thought of a plan and shouted for Rose to create a portal on the ground. She complied and she, Adriel, and me fell through and out another one perpendicular to the ground, so we shot across the snow ground at the same velocity we were falling. With my momentum I crafted an ice shield and slammed it into Dr. Man’s body, sending him through a few rocks and skidding across the ground. 

He slowly got to his feet, undetermined parts of his body bleeding, but mainly his bald head. I formed ice spikes from the remaining snow beneath him and sent them through his wrists so he couldn’t cast any more spells. 

“They’ll never stop coming after you,” Dr. Man told me. “You have no idea just how many there are. And how many support Asai and her people.”

“The Nobles app will tell me,” I said, crafting a sword of ice. Dr. Man chuckled, then coughed, sputtering chunks of blood, ruining the dirtied snow further.

“I wasn’t referring to the Nobles.”

I furrowed my brow. I wanted to know more, but I guess Rose had had enough and she drew a pistol and sent a bullet between his eyes. I understood why, but I needed information. 

“I wasn’t finished with him,” I told her.

“I was.”

“Do you know what he’s referring to?”

“Could be anyone. You really think Nobles are the only ones Asai commands?” Adriel cut in. He clearly didn’t want things to escalate between Rose and me. 

“Meaning?”

“Likely aliens, angels, and gods. Definitely angels, if you know what the Archs are,” Adriel explained. “You didn’t think you were just dealing with the serum were you?”

“What made Dr. Man so strong?”

“Fuck if I know. I’ll ask Erza,” Adriel said. He turned to Rose, who wasn’t showing us her face. “Hey…Do you mind porting us back?”

“Sure,” she said. Her voice was somber. Slightly wavering.

We stepped through to The Bloodbath. Rose looked on the ground for where she left Lynx’s body and found nothing. She approached Erza as she and Vulcon entered the lobby.

“I’m sorry, pumpkin,” she told Rose.

“Where is she?”

“In the back with Amaia’s friends,” Erza responded. Without saying another word, she brushed past Erza and entered the backroom. Erza looked at us. “I take it you still won?”

“If you could call it that,” Adriel said. 

“She needs comfort, Adriel,” Erza told him. Adriel raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not good with that sort of thing,” he said. “Haven’t you known her longer?”

“I will join you in a minute. There’s still the contract to discuss with Amaia, here,” Erza said. Adriel left us and joined Rose in the backroom. Erza turned to me and Vulcon. “Follow.”

I whispered to Vulcon as we did as instructed. “Did she treat you okay?”

“Oh, yeah. Way more than okay,” he said. He seemed like he was dazed or in a trance of some sort. Must’ve been good. 

My heart skipped a beat when I saw two familiar people sitting in a booth before us: Arid and Krow, the two I froze for hunting me my first time here. 

“What is this, Erza?” I demanded to know.

“These two are going to help you with your hunt for Shackle.”