Karabell stared at the beasts, a feeling of anger like he'd never felt before welling up inside him. He hadn't gotten tired. Far from it. As he clenched his fists around the spear's rubber handle, he smirked. The feeling of hitting his opponent... No. The feeling of plunging his weapon as deep into the Aberration's body as he possibly could. To him, there was no better way to let off steam.
"Shono, you help Een. Alice and I will take care of those guys."
They all had different weapons and fighting styles, but that didn't get in the way of their teamwork. If anything, it actually helped them cover each other's weaknesses. In a flash, Karabell was behind the feathered Aberration charging at Alice. A pincer attack. That was how they usually started their battles. And how those battles usually ended. Both Alice and Karabell used piercing weapons, made for weaker but faster attacks. Shono, with his large frame, used a large mace designed to peel away the natural armor of the Aberrations. No matter how deadly the poison was, they had to directly hit the beasts. Karabell's spear could manage to get past their otherwise invincible feathers, but the ones covered in fur or scales were impossible to take on without Shono or Een's help.
He managed to hit the Aberration in front of him, but the tip of his spear didn't pierce its skin. The creature turned around, directing its attacks at Karabell. That was where Alice was supposed to come in. Just as he was about to dodge the Aberration's claws, however, his eyes widened in surprise. The gargling sound was coming from behind him. So the one he was fighting was just a regular Aberration. They didn't follow a strict pattern, but the ones able to produce those weird sounds seemed a little more intelligent than the rest. One in front of him, the other closing in from behind... The same type of pincer attack they'd tried to pull of earlier. In spite of himself, the Captain laughed. With a swift twist of his upper body, he got out of the regular Aberration's way, joining Alice on the other side of the battlefield.
"It looks like you're enjoying this, Kar."
"This is one hell of a fight. I've been aching for something like this, I'm not gonna lie. Now, should we show those beasts why we were called the AAD's best squad?"
Alice smiled, running a hand through her scarlet hair. She was the only one who called him that. Shono had brought both Een and Alice into the team at the same time, three months before. They were siblings, after all. Een had quickly grown accustomed to calling Karabell Captain, but Alice wasn't that kind of person. "His parents were kind enough to give him a name, you know?" she'd said at the time, her lips curled up in a smile. Naturally, she'd gotten an hour-long scolding from Shono afterwards, but she hadn't seemed bothered by it in the slightest.
Like most of the children brought into the Agency, Alice and Een were orphans. That was also part of a soldier's job. Looking for abandoned children among the piles of rubble and giving them a place to call home. Een was a year older than Karabell, and his sister, Alice, was one year younger than the Captain. When he'd first learned that, he'd breathed a sigh of relief. At least he wasn't the youngest member of the team anymore. Over the course of those three months, he'd gotten to know the two fairly well. Alice's straight-forward approach when it came to... pretty much everything had been overwhelming at first, but he'd managed to get used to it. Most importantly, he'd been able to devise a couple of strategies that made use of his new teammates' abilities.
Alice dashed towards the Gargling Aberration, slipping right past the regular one. Karabell stole a glance at Shono and Een's situation. They'd managed to knock the monster down, but, without the help of a piercing weapon, they couldn't finish it off. Shono's mace was made for countering Aberrations covered in fur. Een's one-handed axe fared great against scaly ones. But neither of those weapons could land a killing blow. The sun had begun to set, too.
Alice unleashed a flurry of blows on the Aberration, simultaneously blocking the creature's reckless attacks. Karabell was distracting the other one, so she didn't have to worry about it. It wasn't her first time fighting a Gargling, but that didn't make it any less scary. Compared to the regular ones, that thing could actually dodge her attacks, or at least prevent fatal wounds. But that didn't meant she could just give up.
"Wanna switch?" Karabell shouted with a bewitching grin, just as he landed another good blow on his Aberration.
"This isn't some sort of game... although I can see you're clearly having fun over there. How about you kill it already and give me a hand with this one?" Alice responded between attacks. She was hot-headed, sure. But even she knew that she couldn't handle everything by herself. As soon as he finished her sentence, Alice suddenly felt her sword sink into the Aberration. Without a second thought, she twisted the weapon and plunged it even deeper. With a loud screech, the creature lost its balance, slumping to the ground. The poison was in effect. In a few seconds, the creature would be dead... But there was something incredibly unsettling about that kill. She'd never once heard an Aberration release a cry like that when hit. She fell to her knees before the monster's corpse, panting.
Karabell had also finished off his opponent and was now heading towards the last beast. Since Shono and Een had already brought it down, it wasn't even worth calling it a fight. Een simply peeled away the scales covering the creature's belly before Karabell stabbed it. The fight hadn't lasted that long, butu fighting three enemies at the same time wasn't an easy task. Especially when only two of them possessed weapons that could actually kill those things.
"You really saved our hides, Captain!" Een cheerfully exclaimed.
But Karabell didn't hear him. He was already walking towards the Gargling's corpse. He'd seen Alice collapse next to it, but couldn't have risked letting the pinned down Aberration injure the others.
"Are you alright?"
"Y-yeah... a bit shaken, that's all. Did you..." Alice's voice faltered.
"I heard it. There wasn't anything about screeching Aberrations in the records. And I can't exactly check again. Anyway, the fight's over. We all deserve some rest, especially you and Een. And we wouldn't want to be late to dinner after all, would we?" Karabell replied, but she could hear worry in his voice.
"Thanks, Kar. I don't know if we would've gotten out of this alive if not for you and Shono."
"Come one, that's so unlike you. Acting all meek and that. You just killed a Gargling all on your own. If that's not reason enough to celebrate, I don't know what is," the Captain said, helping her to her feet.
The sky was stained red by the sun's fruitless attempts to linger a bit longer. Karabell sighed as he glanced at the dead creatures. Yet another day of fighting was drawing to a close.