Why had Yuki thrown herself in the way of the attack meant to take Tyra’s life? Wouldn’t it have been much easier to use Rukan’s focus on killing his superior to reach and finally finish him off herself, that way having rid the world of two dangerous Darkalight members?

It certainly would’ve been a better option. And it would have been much more practical to do that, but as Miss Iceflame had realized time and again since the start of this battle, she wasn’t the most practical of people.  

Knowing the wolfwoman was about to be killed by someone who she had clearly trusted and had broken her heart too many times for such a short period of time since showing his true colors, Yuki just couldn’t stand by and let her die like that. Despite them fighting for opposite sides in the war and having hurt people the other cared about, the white-haired beauty had always admired the devotion Tyra had for her subordinates, especially O-Renji Lee. So as ridiculous as it sounded, she thought this woman had more to give the world than serving Darkalight.

And now that they had gone through such a life-or-death experience together, Yuki summoned the strength to get back up with a fully made up mind to not fight the wolfwoman with the intention to kill, but to convince her to somehow leave the wretched organization behind and start a new life. Maybe a life with the Deckstoru militia.

Tyra seemed to be quite confused herself when she finally managed to get up and stopped staring at Rukan’s corpse, having got over the joy of his death. Eventually she turned to look at the young woman who had saved her life, her face in that moment being unreadable. But Yuki could definitely tell she was feeling some kind of emotion under the mask she was trying to keep on.

(Tyra) ‘So what now, Iceflame? We’re the only ones left here, so I say we finish things up. Whoever lives will be able to ensure their allies’ victory.’

She paused to listen to what her opponent’s opinion on the suggestion made was, Yuki taking a deep breath to prepare herself. This was where her gamble was going to start.

(Yuki) ‘What if neither of us dies?’

(Tyra) ‘Oh, yeah? How do you see that happening? Did you think I was going to let you off the hook because you saved my life? As grateful as I am, first and foremost I am a Darkalight colonel who just lost a lot of men, including my lieutenant colonel. I have to at least kill you to have something to show for.’

(Yuki) ‘If that’s true, why didn’t you just attack me the moment you were done with Rukan? My wounds are a lot worse than yours, we both know that. There was no need to ask my opinion if you had already made up your mind. Or maybe you were hoping I was going to provoke you somehow and make it easier for you to attack me?’

The wolfwoman started getting annoyed, Yuki taking that as a sign she was on the right track and had already got under her skin. Now all she needed to do was keep digging.

(Tyra) ‘You a shrink now? Thinking you can fool me with some bullshit so I can let you go help your friends at Dreadblade? That’s the one thing I won’t allow to happen.’

(Yuki) ‘Stop wasting time and kill me, then.’

Unable to come up with a response to that right away, the Darkalight colonel growled while looking aside before returning her attention to her savior.

(Tyra) ‘I … I just don’t like owing someone like you a debt! So I’m thinking how to settle that debt, but still kill you afterwards.’

(Yuki) ‘Why don’t you tell me why you’re serving Darkalight?’

(Tyra) ‘So you can use my past to manipulate me into joining you instead?’

(Yuki) ‘Did I say anything like that? The fact your mind went straight to that means deep down you’re questioning your loyalty to Darkalight, doesn’t it?’

(Tyra) ‘You’re starting to play the shrink again and that’s really getting on my nerves. But if you want to know about my past, you’ll have to work hard for it.’

(Yuki) ‘What do you mean?’

Tyra now showed all the teeth of her grin brimming with confidence while pointing at her blood-covered fur.

(Tyra) ‘All this blood that’s on me … it’s either from what I did to Rukan or from what he did to me. But so far you haven’t put a single scratch on me, Iceflame. You want me to tell you about my life, make me bleed first. Then you’ll have proved you deserve to know.’

In that moment Yuki realized why Hikaru and Seiren and Annabel and Yonira were acting with the other the way they were. First, a wave of exhilaration swept through her and lit her blood on fire.

Then she grinned confidently almost as a reflex reaction, feeling more ready and driven to fight than ever before. This was what it felt like when one had a rival.

(Yuki) ‘You’ve got yourself a deal.’ – while talking, she had already started cladding herself in ice and running certain structures through it – ‘I’ll be sure not to damage your throat so you can talk freely when the time comes to share your story.’

In response, Tyra opened the eyes on her palms and back again, making them turn cyan along with the three on her face and forming out of them that same massive energy wolf with multiple empty scarlet eyes her opponent had seen earlier.

(Tyra) ‘I won’t be that considerate, you bitch!! If you ease up for just a moment, you won’t live to hear my story!!!’

Yuki’s own transformation was complete by then, taking her battle stance as she revealed the new version of her multi-layered ice armor to an enemy for the first time. This was a continuation of what she had developed for her fight with Rale Nightsong during the Nebula Battle, but unlike before, all the clones she had incorporated in her armor weren’t visible. Now they had been miniaturized and hidden within all the ice octahedrons comprising most of the armor, for some places the octahedrons being regular while in others one of the pyramids included in their structure was higher.

As an additional layer of defense, many of the octahedrons were placed in such a way so that one of their halves would stick out and could easily pierce an enemy that came close enough, the biggest among them being four that were coming out of Yuki’s back. Even her head had special protection in the form of a tiara made up of alternating regular and elongated mini-octahedrons, her hair also having been fully frozen and turned into strings of even smaller octahedrons made of her deva.

Of course, the multi-layered ice armor was her trump card and needed a lot of energy and focus to maintain, which meant that considering the white-haired beauty’s state, she wouldn’t be able to use it for long. It was however the best shot she had at countering whatever it was the multi-eyed energy wolf around Tyra could do, so Yuki silenced all doubt in her mind as much as possible and stomped hard on the ground to begin her attack.

The earth under her foot cracked and threw cobblestone remains across a wide area, out of the crater formed by this erupting a quickly spreading lane of ice on the upper part of which were manifested hundreds of octahedrons that kept growing bigger. It was a very fast and wide range attack, yet despite that, the moment the ice made contact with the wolf around Miss Iceflame’s opponent, it broke apart as fast as it had been made, the pieces left of it being absorbed in the eyes of Tyra’s totem manifestation.

Thankfully, Yuki’s face was covered by armor, so the wolfwoman couldn’t see she had gritted her teeth with annoyance under it, but she still grinned mockingly after the ice maiden’s first attack failed.    

(Tyra) ‘Well, that sure didn’t do anything, did it? Want to try again, Iceflame? Or was that attack the best you got?’

(Yuki) ‘I made the first move, so how about you come at me instead?’

(Tyra) ‘Ha! If I do that, you won’t get a chance to show off that pretty armor at all. And you’ll be dead two seconds after I’ve destroyed it. That would make for a boring fight, wouldn’t it?’

The only information Yuki had about the energy wolf was that once Tyra summoned it, she could keep using it for seven minutes before losing the ability to absorb energy at all. That meant the wolfwoman’s time was limited and she couldn’t afford to stall too much, either. But she still had more time than her opponent, judging by the exhaustion that had already started building, Miss Iceflame guessing she wouldn’t be able to maintain her armor for more than another two minutes.

So all she could do was charge again, this time increasing the range of the attack even more with the hopes of being able to keep the wolf busy with absorbing energy long enough to close the distance between herself and the woman controlling it. All the mini-octahedrons covering Yuki’s hair were launched in the air and enlarged, quite a few more octahedrons from other parts of her armor being added to them to become piercing and freezing projectiles in a mass barrage.

The moment she fired all of them, the ice maiden ran as fast as she could while continuing to shatter the ground under her with the destructive power behind each step, successfully having reached the energy wolf before it could absorb the entirety of her attack. What would come next was the much harder part – managing to go through Tyra’s pet to actually be able to touch and make her bleed.

Though knowing using a technique like that would further shorten the amount of time she could hold the armor together, Miss Iceflame went ahead and brought her arms together, combining all the octahedrons covering them in a single structure of the same type and making the numerous clones inside come out and attack as well. With many of them transforming their limbs into octahedrons as well and starting to spin, a sort of shredding typhoon of ice shards was formed around the main blade, that blade being aimed straight at the Darkalight colonel’s head.

Only the wall of cyan energy fur covered with empty scarlet eyes between her and her attacker was able to shatter and absorb all the octahedrons, the clones and the typhoon before even a single piece could reach Tyra, Yuki even needing to jump back so as to not have more of her armor’s energy absorbed. She was still able to see how dead serious the wolfwoman had become while distancing herself from her, though.

(Tyra) ‘You got close with that one, but not close enough, Iceflame. And that’s all the chances I’m gonna give you.’

By the time the white-haired beauty’s third attack had failed, her opponent’s pet had managed to fully consume what remained of the second one with its mouth, now opening it wide and directing its fangs at her to shear all the energy she had left with a single monstrous bite. As the wolf’s shadow covered everything around her in darkness, Yuki knew right away she didn’t stand a chance of being able to block its jaws.

So she didn’t even try and focused everything she had on offense, draining her strength to the max to condense the entirety of her multi-layered armor in a single octahedron she grabbed with her hand. Taking inspiration from how Hikaru would throw his spears made of lightning, Miss Iceflame flung her single remaining weapon at Tyra, having embedded in it the command for all clones hidden inside to come out in a storm of ice blades and spikes when it got close enough to its target.

Hoping the wolf would be too busy ripping through her to be able to absorb such a massive attack at the same time, which would allow it to reach her real opponent, the ice maiden closed her eyes to at least not have to see how she would be torn apart. That didn’t make the pain of the energy fangs digging into her flesh and starting to tear off chunks of skin and muscle from the bones any less agonizing, though.

Soon after came the addition of those fangs’ energy-absorbing effect, her already fatal level of fatigue being increased tenfold in an instant, the combination of that and the blood loss from the biting she was enduring being certain to lead to her death. Attempting to hold the beast’s mouth open with her hands was proof of how incapable of logical thought Yuki had become at this point, because even with her superstrength the wolf couldn’t possibly be held back. Not for more than a few seconds.

All of a sudden the impossible weight of the jaws her crushed hands were feeling disappeared, the white-haired beauty guessing this was because her soul had left her body and could no longer maintain contact with the physical world. Just to be sure, she opened her eyes to realize with great surprise two facts as shocking as her being still alive.

Firstly, the multi-eyed energy wolf around Tyra had disappeared, and secondly, she had a number of fresh cuts on her skin under the fur as well as a few stab wounds, the blood from all of which had added even more scarlet to her silhouette. Something stood out amid that scarlet along with her cyan eyes that had started closing with the exception of the three on her face, her opponent’s attention instantly being drawn to that. Her white teeth were showing because she was smiling.

(Tyra) ‘You crazy fucking bitch. You gave up all your armor just to put a scratch on me? What if that had failed and I had let my wolf keep eating you? You’d be dead now!’

How Yuki was able to muster a confident smile to answer the one on the wolfwoman’s face with, she did not know. But she did it anyway, realizing full well she was going to collapse after finishing her next sentence.

(Yuki) ‘It worked, didn’t it? Now you …’ – proving she was pretty fast in her morphed form once again, Tyra managed  to reach Miss Iceflame and catch her before she fell down all the way, the pressure she started putting on the most severe wounds right away helping her opponent to say a bit more – ‘… n-now you have to tell me your story.’

The Darkalight colonel sighed as she started changing back to her human form, but kept smiling. Once the minimal amount of clothes she wore became visible with the disappearance of the fur covering them, she took off a small med kit out of the back of her belt, giving an answer to satisfy Yuki only after she started patching her up.

(Tyra) ‘I got a bit worn out too with all this shit, so you’re lucky. Finishing you off is impossible for me right now. I’ll only keep talking until I’m able to change back and absorb energy, though. After that, I’m gonna kill you.’

(Yuki) ‘Better get started, then. And don’t bother patching me up. Might miss some important details from the story that way.’

(Tyra) ‘True, but I can’t have you dying or losing consciousness before you hear anything, right? The pain from the stitching will keep you awake and the closing of the wounds – alive long enough so I can still make use of you.’

(Yuki) ‘You’re putting an awful lot of effort to keep alive someone who …’

The wolfwoman turned back to regular woman started sewing up the ice maiden’s abdomen then, the pain that cut through her putting an end to her witty remarks and giving her opponent the opportunity to start telling her tale.

(Tyra) ‘Just shut up already and listen.’

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

It was funny how listening to the shocking story of someone’s life could help you survive the stitching up of your guts with no anesthesia. By the time Tyra had moved on to patching up other wounds, Yuki could barely even register any pain, because that was how unbelievable everything she had learned was.

For starters, up to that point she hadn’t even known what age the wolfwoman was, turning out she was 22 – a bit older than the white-haired beauty had assumed, but then again, she came from a special heritage. Tyra’s mother had been a wolfwoman morph herself and born in Exis – a country mixing traditional values with very high technologies located far from Barilia that was also the place with the most transformational deva users out of the whole planet. Tyra’s father, on the other hand, had had an energy-absorbing deva and had come from Raxul – Deathaxe and the darkans’ home – moreover having been a trusted member of Deathaxe’s organization Xulean Rebirth (XuBirth).

The Darkalight colonel’s parents had both been members of that organization, actually, falling in love as they had fought for a restoration of complete deviant rule over Saiten until eventually Tyra had been born. Not long after, however, their happiness had been drowned in tears due to the initiation of the final stage of the campaign to annihilate XuBirth forever.

When Tyra had been three years old, the time of those same battles the Summerbolt, Blackscale veterans and Zoran had been a part of had come. Among the first memories the wolfwoman had had of her life were actually those of her home being destroyed by the Allied Forces of Saiten and her father dying to protect her and her mother.

Tyra had told Yuki she didn’t remember who the killer of her father had been exactly, but for all Yuki knew, it could’ve been one of the Summerbolts or Blackscales – one of the people she admired the most. In the aftermath of that, the Darkalight colonel’s mother had been cut off from all her allies during the chaos of the battle, seeing as how she had had little time before being surrounded by Allied Forces troops, deciding to take drastic measures.

Namely, she would enter a more wolf-like form and force her child to do the same, both of them pretending to be nothing but mindless animals, because that way the tortures they would have to endure would certainly be more bearable than if the enemy had found out they were XuBirth members. Tyra had been too young to bring out her deva at that age, however, to make her awaken it, her mother biting her many times over. Enough times to leave her in a near-dead state where only the partial regenerative abilities gained from morphing into wolfwoman (or at the time wolfgirl) form could have saved her.

As traumatizing as it had been, this plan had worked, both scarlet-furred wolves being taken by local members of the Allied Forces to serve as pets in their camp. Due to having transformed at such a young age, Tyra had admitted to Yuki that she had no memory of the years she had spent living as a wolf cub, her mother remembering everything, unfortunately.

All the misery and horrors they had endured at the hands of their captors, who although pretending to care only about world peace, had actually been the vilest type of ordinari that enjoyed abusing others much more than any of the XuBirth members they had killed. The Darkalight colonel’s mother had borne through all these hardships with the hopes of a chance of escape eventually presenting itself, but after having waited for seven years, no such opportunity had come their way, moreover another problem looming on the horizon.

No matter how skilled a transformation deva user is, they cannot stay transformed for an indefinite amount of time. And after having poured very ounce of her strength and focus into maintaining a wolf form for years, Tyra’s mother had finally reached her limit, meaning it had been only a matter of time for their true identities to be discovered.

Drastic measures had been necessary again, this time the desperate wolfwoman trying to force her child to awaken the deva she had hopefully inherited from her father as well in order to make her absorb some energy from the environment and use it to keep both of them transformed a bit longer. Rather than bite her like before, she had instead left her daughter starve for weeks on end to make her reach such a level of exhaustion where she would have to use energy absorption to keep herself alive.

Once again the plan had worked, but there had been unexpected consequences of its success. As she had not been ready to awaken her second deva at that age, Tyra had lost all control of it after its manifestation, the need to absorb energy being so great that some of the scars left on her from the biting she had endured at her mother’s fangs years ago had been torn open by force. One of the scars had been between her eyes, two – on each of her palms and two more – on her upper back, on that day the Seven Eyes of the Tyrant having been born.

The closest source to absorb energy from had been her mother, so without wanting to, Tyra had ended up absorbing every ounce of energy she had had left, killing her in the process. That energy had been too much for the 10-year-old child’s body, causing an overload that had made her lose the use of both her devas for quite some time, changing back to a human form and as a side effect of the energy absorption, being maddened by the flooding of her mind with all her mother’s memories.

That had been how she had learned of all that had happened since her forced transformation into a scarlet wolf cub, before being able to even partially realize what she had experienced and done to her mother, the two’s captors finding them. And through initially shocked, the vile ordinari men had found more than one use for the living daughter and her dead parent.

Even more horrific experiences had followed for Tyra from there, barely surviving in a living hell for two years before she had finally been able to transform into a wolfwoman again. Once she had fully consciously morphed for the first time and reawakened her father’s deva, the future Darkalight colonel had quickly slaughtered all her captors in the most violent manner, taking her mother’s body after and running off.

Needless to say, she hadn’t been able to get far before the hunt organized by the local police and military had reached her, despite giving it her all while fighting them, ending up defeated. And she would have definitely died on that night if a savior had not intervened.

Deathaxe himself and his loyal darkans had attacked the ordinari hunters then, killing pretty much the entire town’s population and retrieving the exhausted and badly wounded young woman and her mother’s body. Upon waking up, Tyra had immediately recognized the darkan leader as the man her mother and father had always admired the most from the former’s memories transferred to her, Deathaxe then explaining how their fateful meeting had come about.

As it had turned out, XuBirth’s leader and his closest compatriots had been able to survive the Allied Forces of Saiten’s onslaught by escaping to another country, having barely spent a few years in peace in it when getting attacked by another organization – Darkalight. First, they had all been killed, then – brought back to life and made to serve their murderers as they attempted to create a version of the world where all the ordinari and the deviants would be undead and could thus live together happily.

Deathaxe himself or Aktad, as he had originally been named, had not fallen under the darklighters’ control, however, having schemed for years how to rebuild XuBirth from within Darkalight’s ranks and one day absorb it in his own organization to continue working to achieve his old goal – create a world ruled only by deviants. To do that, he would need trusted allies among the living, however, after rising high enough in Darkalight’s ranks to be given some freedom to act independently, beginning a search for any other XuBirth survivors or people related to them.

That was how he had found Tyra, already having two other promising students about her age whose parents had also been members of his organization, who had special abilities and who had had traumatizing pasts like her. When asked if she would join them as Deathaxe’s third apprentice, she had agreed right away, owing so much to the darkan already with more to come.

The wolfwoman’s mother had been resurrected as per her mentor’s request and though she had not been the same as before, at least the two had been reunited, from there Tyra vowing to never stop fighting for Deathaxe until his dream had come true. Along the way she herself had found a promising boy to make a student of in the face of O-Renji Lee – someone no less talented and tormented by ordinari in his past than her, the two of them experiencing a lot together.

Having trained and fought side by side with the Flexoid Battalion and Daroid-Taxoid Legion members for years, over time Tyra and O-Renji had found they had started getting attached not only to the deviants in their regiment’s ranks, but to the ordinari as well. That duo had actually started believing in time that the peaceful and happy coexistence between ordinari and deviants Darkalight had been striving to achieve could actually happen, neither one daring to share their hopes with Deathaxe, who was ever so skeptical toward the non-powered humans.

So instead the two of them had made it their dream and goal to one day prove to their general such coexistence was possible and then live happily together alongside the regiment’s members from both species after Darkalight had succeeded in changing the world.

 

Tyra paused and sighed as she finished patching up Yuki’s most severe wounds, slamming a fist in her face right after as the regret on her face was replaced by fury and she started changing into her wolfwoman form again.

(Tyra) ‘But that’s never going to happen now because you bastards killed everyone from the Daroid-Taxoid Legion and Rukan killed O-Renji and plenty of people from the Flexoid Battalion!! Deathaxe has always been right!! The only way for this madness to end is for one of the species to go extinct!!!’

Miss Iceflame was able to come to her senses fast enough, dodging the next strike and forcing her body to move even more as she head-butted Tyra to push some distance away from her while getting back on her feet. And all the while she kept replaying the facts she had just learned in her mind in a desperate search to find something that could convince the Darkalight colonel to turn away from her present path. 

(Yuki) ‘I take it you’re done with the story-telling, then?’

The fully transformed wolfwoman spat some blood aside while getting up again herself and starting to open the four of the Seven Eyes of the Tyrant that were normally closed, her opponent beginning to clad herself in ice as a response before either of them said anything else.

(Tyra) ‘You know my story now, Iceflame, and I’ve given you time to rest and even patched you up. For me that means our score is settled, so let’s finish this up already before I lose all the people I care about!’

Hearing that solidified in Yuki’s mind the impossibility of making Tyra leave Darkalight or give up on her dream. That organization was the only thing that could make that dream come true, after all, and the only people left in the world who the wolfwoman considered family were members of it. Actually, those same people were presently fighting to the death against the Multi-talion that Miss Iceflame needed to protect not too far from the two young women.

(Yuki) ‘I get where you’re coming from as much as an amnesiac like me can, Tyra, but there are some ordinari and a lot of deviants I care about who won’t go for the version of the world you and Deathaxe are trying to make. I’m sorry, but if that’s how you feel … talking anymore really is pointless. All that’s left is for me to kill you and then go do the same to your general.’