While Alex was attempting to locate August through the smoke cloud with his whip, Hana called for backup. More members of Riot assembled to defeat the unbeatable Requiem Reaper. Clad in a black cloak, darkened hood darkening his features: his green eye glistening in the shadows, not to mention his ever-moving snowy hair.
"I don't want to involve Katie in this, August!" Azazel called out.
As he continued talking, Kate side-eyed her father, tightening her grip against the Blade's ivory handle.
"Let's make this a fair fight between brothers! A final rematch; for old times! Whaddya say?!" The Detective yelled again.
For the first few seconds, after he asked this, the Reaper was idle. The only moving things about him were his attire and hair; swaying in the breeze of the mid-winter wind. Then, his hands went to the hood hiding his face, and threw it back. Revealing his wholehearted features from the unmarked Eternal Sight programmed into his retinas, to the tan skin complexion he inherited from his parents.
Everything recognizable Azazel remembered so wrathfully. That time in his youth when he called himself the Crow, using nothing more than his uneducated sense of justice to take lives. A puppet to the strings of one 'Doctor'. Despite what occurred in the past and how everyone developed from those experiences, Detective Karlo saw through the charade. That's why, no matter if Katie sweated or not, he was sure that the answer he'd receive was the one he inevitably got.
"Of course!" August replied tearfully.
Shocked from what she'd heard, Katie was escorted aside. Azazel didn't turn to her, nor did he continue using the Crow's claws. Instead, he took the Blade from her and pushed her away. Pointing it forward after stealing it from his daughter, Karlo summoned the sheathe and covered the katana within the plain-white cover.
"Alex is alive, isn't he?" Azazel asked.
"Do you think I could do something like that to my first student?" dryly queried August.
"Of course not. Katie, please recover Alex—"
"No. He stays with me until your assault ends or you can steal him from me. If all of Riot intends to destroy me, I'll defeat every last member until I'm the only one left standing. Only then will you realize your lower place in the world," August sinisterly stated.
"Fine. If that's the way things are then…"
August and Azazel vanished in unison. Blocking his face with the Blackened steel, Karlo's blue eyes followed the Reaper's fist upon clashing against the sword. Thrown away from his white-haired opponent, he tumbled onto his feet as Rivera came running ahead to follow up with another.
Just as he was about to reach close enough, the former Crow instinctively slashed at his enemy before he threw his head back. Not only had his katana sliced away at space, but the Reaper had leaped into the air. Smashing against the ground with a diving kick, the Crow rolled away just before he could get crushed. Exiting the smoke cloud with a charging fist, August went for his face again.
This time, the Detective grabbed his fist and started swinging him around with the Reaper in his hold. Instead of repeatedly swinging him by his arm, he threw him into a nearby tree. Looking from side to side with Eternal Sight, August clenched his teeth and instantly rose his arms. The Blade sunk into his limbs from above, leading the Reaper to reveal his head once more.
Heavily gasping, faux blood leaking from his lips, Karlo's blue eyes left a light trail as he raised his arm and punched into August's exposed gut. Before he soared through the tree's trunk, the Crow tore out his katana and disappeared at the same time his enemy flew away.
Sprinting alongside August's flailing body, Azazel held his hand against the sword's handle protruding out the sheath it was covered in. Suddenly, everything around him slowed. Upon slowly revealing the tiniest smidge of the Blade, black lightning thundered out the steel.
'Purge of Demons.'
He cleaved at the air after quickly unsheathing his Blade, throwing a slash projectile at him in mid-air. Slicing apart everything in its path, August's eyes widened. Just barely, his legs scraped across the ground. Unable to halt his continuous movement, he ducked under the slash and threw his head back up, having unintentionally utilized a tree trunk to stop himself.
Marked pupils rapidly darting within the eyeball prism, he just barely managed to raise his arm. A metal clang reverberated from the impact the Blade made upon clashing against his arm. After that initial slash, the Crow raised his katana again, steel ablaze with darkened electricity. Unable to think of anything else to do but counter, an emerald lightning streak flashed by his face as he threw his arm ahead.
Repeated slashes abandoning misty black trails, August's rapid punches erupted an emerald thunderstorm. The brightness leaked from the forest, enlightening Katie's face as she watched from afar. Azazel was eventually thrown back, now holding the Blade in his left hand. Blue eyes noticing the Reaper's frontal disappearance, the Detective tightened his hold against the katana's handle; his veins popping out his blood to spread across his hands.
'Spatial Fissure.'
He turned around entirely, raising the blade with his arm, thus splicing away the air surrounding them—not to mention flawlessly obliterating the space separating the battling duo. With this impossibility brought into reality, the Reaper and the Crow were both blown away. Flying out from the forest, each of them continued slashing at one another, their feet now engraved on the plain, grass road they were originally battling against.
Azazel watched August leap again, this time throwing those fearsome tendrils his way from above. Instead of cutting them apart with one slash, his hand raised the katana once more! Producing multiple afterimages at speeds similar to light, the ash-reduced tendrils collapsed to the ground, as if they were nothing more than incessant ropes.
'He keeps disappearing,' Azazel irritably noted.
Then, he turned around again. In just the nick of time, he'd personally discarded August of his left arm before it came crashing down at the back of his skull. The Detective then kicked the Reaper away, detonating a shockwave from the impact.
August's back slammed against the distant hill. His quarters atop the mountain shook against its foundation. Eternal Sight subconsciously expanded upon his pupils processing what occurred in the following second. His conscience saved him, for his head, turned the slightest amount rightward, had flawlessly dodged the incoming Blade stabbed into the hill.
Azazel and August stood face-to-face. The Reaper's discolored orbs remained the same even now. Yet there was something within those irises only the Crow could see. Despite the deadliness of this gruesome battle, they could take this tiny moment in time to gaze into one another's eyes… and remember everything leading up to this point.
'Azazel.'
The echoing sound of his soothing voice whispering his name. To think that was just three years ago now. But the past was the past. This was now. Whether or not he liked what he had to do, he had no other choice. And so, before August could finish the chuckle he'd abruptly mustered… blood spat out his mouth.
The life from his irises began dissipating, the muscles and fat in his skin gradually vanishing. His bony arm raised, skeletal fingers gracing the Detective's right cheek while a tear squeezed out his eye. He didn't need to look down—he could feel it more than anything, and yet, at the same time, he couldn't feel anything. There was just the sight of those claws piercing through his chest, clenched around his metallic excuse for a heart.
Azazel looked down at his arm as if realizing what he was doing. He desperately attempted yanking out his hand, tears continuously coursing down his cheeks. Anxious sobs choked out his throat, incomprehensible pleads to escape his quivering mouth. Unfortunately, despite his best efforts, there was no withdrawing the limb from within the Reaper's stomach.
Having witnessed the struggle through fading, blurry vision, August utilized his remaining strength and raised his right arm. Now, his bony cuticles remained against the Detective's cheek. Overhead, the familiar sound of distant cawing crows entered their eardrums. Katie from behind, sprinting toward her father and uncle, watching them fly by as their wings flapped, sending them over the surrounding treetops.
It was almost as though the Reaper was thrust back into his youth. Surrounded by wholly white, snow falling from indistinguishable heavens, August stared; smiling.
'Yes. Among the tens of thousands of friends and foes, you are the only one who ever made me forget… about what I was fighting for. And so—'
With his final breath, he managed to let out a weak:
"Live…"
The Detective carried the Reaper's limp corpse down the grassy road. Bypassing Katie's open-mouth shock as she watched her father carry her deceased uncle forward. Now standing beside her knelt posture against the ground, the overhead sunlight shadowed his bright blue eyes.
"I always knew it would turn out like this."
Katie upturned her skull at her father's familiar voice expressing his regrets.
"He was always more of a hero than anyone else."