A horrified expression plastered onto the leader's face. His eyes widened, but his pupils narrowed. The shadow of the night extended all around him, painting his world black. His knees weakened as a pair of glowing eyes stared back at him through the darkness.
The leader fell to the cold floor, exhausted and fearful for his life. Something about the cold lonesome eyes triggered an ancestral urge in him that told him to escape.
The boy crawled away from the eyes as quickly as he could, but the light from the eyes strayed off into 2 hands that grabbed him by the legs. The light pulled him into the shadows, dragging him through the mud and scraping his knees and elbows against the small rocks embedded in the soft ground.
He was done for at this point since he had let fear take over. The eyes flared and expanded, consuming him in their brightness and blinding him from reality.
"You've lost," the light said as the boy tried shielding himself from its piercing intensity. Just moments ago he was crushing Nova under his foot and now he was somehow being overpowered by a light.
"You've lost already." The light said as it vanished, leaving the boy unconscious in complete darkness.
Axel fell to his knees, holding his chest as he breathed heavily. He had successfully put the leader out of commission but it had cost him a significant amount of stamina. The technique he had used, [Blinding Apathy], was ranked High Gold and Axel had barely mastered it.
The concept behind [Blinding Apathy] was one rooted deeply in the eye's biology. Covering his whole body in lightning, Axel would act as a beacon of light, blinding the opponent. When the eye is exposed to high intensity light, the pupil contracts in an attempt to reduce the amount of light entering the eye to a safe level. The next step was to strobe the lightning around him by continuously turning it on and off. This confuses the opponent and disorients them.
With the opponent confused and their field of vision restricted, all Axel had to do was make the lights around him really small so that they would be the centre of the opponent's attention. He let go of all the lightning around him and only chose to manifest it around his eyes. The narrowed pupils will be able to focus clearly on the singular source of light and distract the opponent from everything around them. After that it was just a simple game of beating them up before they realise that they have been tricked.
Axel grabbed the ropes that had tied Wolfe and used them to tie the three attackers before attending to Nova. He checked for a pulse and a relieved sigh left him as the low bumping echoed through his fingertips. He barely had the energy to carry Nova back but he had to try either way. The bright light at the beginning of [Blinding Apathy] was sure to gain someone's attention but Axel couldn't rely on such a low probability to save Nova and himself. He had to do it himself and if he was lucky he would find help along the way.
"You're Axel aren't you?" A tall man asked as the beaten up kid finally entered the vicinity of the hospital. "You're the one who brought Wolfe in right? What happened? Tell me now!" The man raised his voice, but Axel noticed the concern hiding behind his anger.
Axel couldn't deal with the man's questioning and was on the brink of collapsing due to Nova's heavy body. She was shorter than Wolfe but much more muscular and heavier.
"Who's that?" The man asked as he noticed Nova slung over Axel's shoulder. The black and red hair horrified the man to his core and he couldn't take his eyes off it. His strict nature devolved into a nervous mess as he saw the blood plastered across Nova's face and her bruised, shattered hands.
"Is that…'' The man couldn't get himself to say what he was thinking. "N-N…" He continued stuttering as he fell to the ground, his mouth and hands shaking violently.
He faced Axel with eyes brimming with hatred and grabbed onto the boy's shoulders aggressively. "Who did this? Where are they?"
Axel, now running on the last drop of his stamina, pointed towards the general direction. "There's a clearing in the woods there. There's 3 boys about 2 or 3 years older than me who've been tied up."
The man rushed forward, looking back thankfully at Axel and entrusting Nova's safety to him. Axel looked down disappointedly. The way the man had rushed out meant that he would end up doing something he would later regret.
Turning back he shouted at the fading silhouette of the man. "Please calm down Professor Emblaze! Please. Stop!" But Axel's voice did not reach the enraged man. Instead it just faded away in the cold night air.