Chapter Text
Confusion followed betrayal, and a fierce battle broke out midst the confusion.
"Nagi, no!" Yuito cried, desperate to do something yet doing nothing as he watched his best friend cut Captain Seto to ribbons.
Blood spattered on the ground and on Nagi's face. The warmth of it jolted him from his oppressive mental prison. But only for a moment.
Leaden, death-defying footfalls followed. Seto approached the startled boy and took him into his embrace. Tender and caring, he held him as a father would his son. "I won't... let them have you, Nagi... Not while you're under my command," his voice rasped painfully in his throat.
Those were his final words and zapping Nagi's altered brain was his final action. As he fell, limp and lukewarm, opposite of the boy, he wondered if the electrical surge he'd used was too strong. He hoped it wasn't.
His cold body hitting the ground was the catalyst for the world's end. It stoked the flame of emotion, a budding blossom of red strings.
A panicked Yuito called out to Kasane when he glimpsed fate's red glow flowering at her feet. The fear of losing yet another comrade propelled him forward, made him reach out to her.
When the tips of their fingers met, red fate colliding with red fate, the blooming flower of time opened up and swallowed them whole.
A duo trekked a shattered land, one abused by the ravages of war and neglected by time. The weathered pavement on which they walked and the surrounding buildings were crumbling. Great thorns, like the angry claws of trees seeking vengeance for the destruction of their world, jutted forth from these shattered structures.
The two men had already been walking for hours, with the howl of the wind — a lonesome, ghoulish breath — tugging at their clothes and hair. The journey began to wear onYakumo.
"So, what's this thing you want to show me, anyway? He asked, casting his discontent into the shallows of allusion.
"You'll see when we get there," Louis answered.
"If not to fight the Lost or search for blood beads, I'm not sure why the hell we're out here. You can't blame a guy for wanting to know."
Louis said nothing.
"How much farther anyway?"
Louis stopped. "There." He pointed."
Yakumo looked, and his eyes grew wide. "A weakness in the mist..."
Louis did not respond. He instead walked forward.
"Hey, what are you doing?" Yakumo called after him. He looked on with horror as Louis stepped into the mist.
The mist in which he now stood was a fading substance. It looked more like red-colored dust than some injurious mist conjured up to stop their kind from seeking the beyond.
Louis' eyes didn't glow red with blood thirst. He didn't become one of the Lost, nor did he disintegrate.
It perplexed Yakumo, even drew his curiosity. Yet caution remained as he approached and poked his fingers into the swirling fog. He wiggled his digits only when he felt brave enough to do so. Red harmless whirls formed around his hand as he continued stirring at the mist. "Do you think it's him?" he asked, concerned.
"No. Our friend is the Successor of the Blood, after all."
"Then, think it's related to that quake the other day?"
"It likely could be."
Removing his hand from the mist, Yakumo held his arm akimbo as his brow creased with contemplation. "How the hell did you find this, anyway?"
"I followed a strange creature."
Yakumo raised a brow and slung his massive sword over his shoulder.
"It wasn't one of the Lost," Louis explained, clearing up any misconceptions.
"A Horror then?"
"No. It looked like a vase with legs."
Yakumo scoffed. "A vase... Like, a flower vase with legs? Really."
"I know what I saw."
Yakumo said nothing more on the matter. He just shrugged. "Okay, then. So, what do you think caused this?" He arched his eyes, referencing the fading mist.
Louis perched his chin on a thumb and forefinger. After giving the question some thought, he then answered. "I believe we'll find the answer outside the Gaol of the Mist."
Not an unwelcomed answer. Yakumo beamed. "Hell yeah! Party outside the Gaol," he celebrated — a little too soon.
"This is a survey; nothing more," Louis chastised him.
"Yeah, well, survey, party, whatever, let's just hope we don't run into any Horrors... or that vase of yours."
Paying Yakumo's quip no heed, Louis turned his back to him and faced the mist.
It was difficult to navigate. They had to wade through the red mist as if wading through a sticky, humid bog. There were virulent, deep red patches — like angry bits of poisonous clouds fallen to earth from heaven —, and they warranted a level of caution.
"Watch your step," Louis would say whenever noticing one of these dangerous wispy landmines lying in wait.
"Watch your flank," Yakumo likewise warned his friend when an angry-looking nimbus of red wafted in their direction under the militant order of a poorly-timed gust of wind.
It took them a tense forty-five minutes to navigate through the mist. But they made it out unscathed. An underwhelming sight greeted them on the other side.
Cars, models which they've never seen, littered the roads. Some were stacked helter-skelter atop each other in five-or-so-way collisions — as if their owners had crashed, in a frenzy, to escape something terrifying. Some were flipped over with their doors ripped off the hinges.
From strange places odd plants grew. They grew from the pavement. They also grew inside abandoned cars and on what looked to be skeletal remains.
"Hey, I wouldn't touch that if I were you," Yakumo warned.
Louis ran his finger along the stem of one plant. "Feels like..." he said. He cut himself short and reared back up. Dusting off his hands and leaning a hip against the rusty old car, he cast his ruminative gaze up at the sky.
Following his lead, Yakumo looked up as well. What he saw stunned him. "There's some freaky film covering the sky."
Louis hummed.
"Not that we could tell from inside the Gaol... but what the hell happened out here?"
"It's like the earth itself has been sealed off..." Louis opined.
"You really think so?" Yakumo was equal parts curious and anxious.
"This is just conjecture, but if the sky suggests anything, it's that the surviving humans abandoned earth for space."
A forlorn gaze floated to the ground. Yakumo's spirit was as good as despaired thanks to Louis' summation. "So, humanity just abandoned the fight, huh..."
"It's only conjecture; don't take it too seriously."
"Yeah, but —"
"Let's go."
And that was that.
With a whirl of emotions flitting about his features, Yakumo scratched his neck. He moved on and forward with Louis.
For hours they walked, devastation's reel passing them by until they happened upon a highway. It was a wide highway, able to pack many cars in multiple lanes.
Without a soul to manage it, some of its overpasses crumbled like brittle bones. There were some exits that led to nowhere, some that led somewhere, and others that led to a drop of certain death.
Rugged, old, and so stubborn it refused to give in to dilapidation, it stood proud, like a testament to humanity's indomitable will. The highway refused to bough even to the pressure of deterioration, signifying true grit in the face of certain destruction.
Debris fell to a sea of concrete below as Yakumo peered over a shattered overpass. He whistled. "That's quite the drop," he said, mostly to himself. "Hard to imagine anyone had the time to build this with those Horrors running around.
Louis, joining him to peer over the edge, replied, "It's strange... we have yet to see a Horror."
A pensive Yakumo crossed his arms. As usual, his friend's observation was accurate. But they remained cautious despite that. Their periphery stayed open. They kept their weapons drawn and blood veils at the ready as they hiked the abandoned highway's length.
Three dead ends later, and after Yakumo narrowly avoided plummeting to his immortal death and rebirth, they discovered a Cherry Blossom tree. Its preternatural size inspired awe and demanded respect. Its roots, which the revenants had passed before but couldn't identify, dug into the pavement and earth as if proclaiming itself the king of this crumbling, ruined realm.
"That's one helluva tree," Yakumo's words rasped in his chest. He approached the colossus of pink and brown.
Louis joined him. To look up both men's necks had to bend so far back that the base of their skulls touched their backs.
High above the tree, hanging in the sky like a black pearl of destruction, was a strange-looking distortion that pulsated with positive charge and crackled with negative energy. The phenomenon was unknown to either Yakumo or Louis, the latter of which being the more scientifically driven of the two. Neither could describe it. Even the feeling it instilled in them remained ineffable. Fear? Unrest? Maybe confusion? They never had the chance to explore the possibilities, however.
Louis' head swiveled to the side.
"What is it?" Yakumo asked when he noticed his partner stir.
"Company..."
"It was only a matter of time, huh."
"Here they come."
Strange otherworldly creatures crept up from behind. These odd beasts lunged forward, hoping to catch their prey by surprise. But both revenants were prepared.
Brandishing Oni Bane, Yakumo spun around with a keen glint in his eye and swung his weapon upward, cutting his attacker in two. More took the fallen creature's place and accosted him.
Meanwhile, Louis fought against what looked like mannequins. These mannequin-like creatures moved like walking corpses with rigor mortis. They each held a metal bar that curved into a dangerous hook at one end, and they had a flame blazing atop their heads.
With gnarled, animal-like legs, they flounced about before striking. This made reading their movements a simple task, leaving them open for counter attacks. Louis watched how they staggered before they would raise their cane-like weapons. He then dodged when they attacked, following up with a rending slice, one of practiced precision that separated hands from wrists. Louis danced with blade in hand.
Each creature wailed before bursting into what seemed to be flower petals upon defeat. These petals, looking like images conjured up from a dream, drifted to the ground before fading away.
Both men fought with much ferocity, rending the metallic armor off canteen-like freaks of nature and cracking the jaws of large yawning monsters. They were so lost in battle that they failed to see the drone hovering overhead.
Only when flying creatures with warped inverted bodies, where their heads and arms hung beneath them, attacked from above, did Yakumo look up. He shielded his eyes when he was bombarded with sudden camera flashes.
A distraction at worst, the flashing light left him vulnerable and open to the speedy charge of a galloping foe. It rushed forward, swinging its masked face before driving its metallic spike of a nose through the revenant's chest.
The force of the impact sent a distracted Yakumo flying right into a car, where he slumped before stamping to his feet. Is chest had since healed, but his pride remained wounded.
"You bastard..." he snarled like a wrathful demon from the deepest, darkest bowels of hell.
In his fury, he tore the hood from the car, with just a single hand, to use as a weapon in place of the one he'd lost during the assault. He saw only red as he rushed forward and parried another attack from the galloping beast. He caught its blood-drenched metallic spike within the door's alloy and used the own creature's weight against it with a swift jerk and a twist.
Caaack! The creature's neck snapped with relative ease. Yakumo, winding back, prepared for the finishing blow. He summoned forth his hounds from undying blood, made manifest by his blood veil, and sent the growling canine heads to rent the metal from the beast's face. With its soft bits finally exposed, its head got smashed in, brutally and with enough force to crack the pavement, by the incensed revenant.
That was the end of them. Louis had dealt with the remaining during the brief time it had taken Yakumo to recover from being knocked clean off his feet.
Only the clicking and flashing remained.
Irked by the distraction it had caused, Yakumo stormed toward it, grabbing his sword along the way — ready to tear that drone to pieces. But then it spoke, prompting Louis to rush in and stop him. Begrudgingly, a reluctant Yakumo stayed his hand.
"Wow! What and incredible display of physical prowess!" The voice likely came from a built-in speaker.
Louis could only push back against Yakumo's urge to lunge forward and strike the drone. And again, he yielded. If only just because Louis was his friend.
"Are you two new OSF recruits? What's your names? Platoon commander?"
Too many questions...
Louis and Yakumo exchanged glances, speaking to each other through their gazes.
Yakumo released all his pent-up irritation in one extensive sigh when Louis stepped aside. Without hesitation, he dashed forward as swift as lightning to slice the drone in half. It whirred as fell to the pavement.
"Sorry about that," Louis said, mostly to whomever was speaking through the now bisected drone, "but we can't have you following us."
"Well, I'll be damned. I guess humanity's still around after all," Yakumo stated with a smile. He was awash with relief. "So, what now?"
"We return to base to assess the situation."
"Why wait?"
Louis loosed a thoughtful sigh. "We don't know whether they're friend or foe. We can return to make contact another time. But for now, we should discuss what we've discovered back at base."
"One step at a time, right?" Yakumo asked, doing his best not to frown.
Patting his fellow disheartened revenant on the shoulder — three heavy, apologetic pats —, Louis nodded. "Come on. We should leave before we're spotted again," he said, giving the much taller man's shoulder a little shake.