At first it was blinding, but then Tanjo had miraculously reappeared on the surface of Shanti, one of his fists clenched around the collar of an assailant's shirt, his free hand poised with a ready thrust, waiting to slam into the vulnerable man in Tanjo's grasp.
The boy's eyes wavered, his arms shaking sporadically. Briefly, Tanjo reflected on what Aphrodite, the goddess who arbitrarily pulled him from his world, had said:
'Do you seriously need to end that man's life—a person who is weak compared to you—just to deactivate those exploding doohickeys?'
Tanjo exhaled, "Stay here."
Carelessly, Tanjo relinquished his grasp on the main assailant, who still had an intolerable grin stretching his lips from cheek to cheek. Slowly, the jet-black-haired boy spun around, his eyes analyzing the Shanti warriors coated in tanned armor positioned right outside the red dome that Tanjo had conjured in utmost haste.
'They don't look too keen on staying put…' Tanjo noted, eyeing their antsy footing and perpetually shifting bodies.
Tanjo was lucky to have placed the barrier outside of the assailant's magic-detecting contraption. If the red dome had been any lower, the explosives would have potentially detonated before the boy could even act. However, one thought struck the boy oddly.
'How did he use magic without his own explosives going off?'
Nevertheless, Tanjo cleared his own head, redirecting his thought process to defusing the bombs.
A voice then spoke, "So you're just going to walk away?"
The cloaked boy shifted his body to the side, eyeing the main assailant behind him. His grin was gone, replaced with a venomous countenance that pulled his face downward. His eyes glared sharply at Tanjo, his Aura Sense flaring.
"Are you going to stop me?" Tanjo inquired, curious as to what the assailant could manage.
Suddenly, the wicked assailant brandished a horizontal device from out of his pocket, his teeth clenching. Tanjo quickly realized what the device was. The detonator.
The assailant's voice grew hoarse as he shouted, "You're not going to trample on my shining retribution and walk away! You and everyone here will perish, along with the safety of this nation!"
At the top of the device, the lid had popped open, flashing a red, circular button. The assailant then stationed his thumb directly above the button, immediately lowering it in an attempt to set off the explosives.
*WHOOSH!*
Just as the assailant tried to press the button, the device had been pulled from his hand.
"Not fast enough." Tanjo mocked, bringing the device closer to him as it entered his grasp. "You're a lunatic, unfit to be left alive. But, as of right now, that's not my choice to make anymore. That'll be up to Shanti."
The assailant growled heatedly, his fingernails digging into his palms with ire.
In the blink of an eye, the assailant was constrained by numerous warriors. Subtly, Tanjo looked behind him, down at the chaos that had ensued. The remains of once living civilians littered the ground, their blood mixing with one another as it seeped into the pathway.
"I'm sorry…" Tanjo apologized sincerely, his blue eyes growing dim.
"It's too late to be sorry, bucko! Those bombs are still going to detonate! Don't forget that I still used my own magic!" The assailant barked.
Tanjo perked up at the man's indignant words. So he was not exempt from the rigged explosives! The boy should have realized his stupidity in that moment much sooner.
"Those bombs…" The assailant spoke raggedly. "They have a—!"
"—Countdown!" Tanjo yelled abruptly, his eyes widening. "You activated them without anyone knowing when you used your magic to prevent your comrade from using his weapon on me!"
The assailant's grin returned. "You won't find them all; I had ten of them planted across Heiwa no Kabe—this place is far too large for you to stop them! And by now, you have roughly 30 seconds. The clock's ticking, bucko!"
A grave expression formed on Tanjo's face. In a second, the boy looked down at the ground and shot himself through it, creating a deep hole. Elsewhere, Tanjo emerged from the ground, outside his red dome.
If Tanjo had not gone underground, he would not have been able to go around the magic-detecting sensors that the assailant boasted about many moments prior. But now, Tanjo was no longer impeded by it, managing to escape unscathed.
Tanjo had no clue as to how he could prevent those bombs from killing hundreds—potentially thousands—of innocent people, but he had to think fast.
'How do bombs work?' Tanjo asked himself, becoming pensive. 'For the bombs to be set off, they have to be charged—a build up, in a sense—and through that I can…'
A revelation surged through Tanjo like a bolt of lightning, his mind clicking. "I can detect the bombs just before they go off if I can sense their charge!"
XXX
Begrudgingly, Asami traversed the paths of Shanti hastily, searching for Tanjo. Her hood swayed in the wind, revealing her disappointed features. The gates of Shanti had been closed, preventing the other three nations from entering or leaving—this alone would cause discord among Adonai and Zebulun.
Purposefully isolating their nation breaches the long-lasting peace since the Keisan War. Kyoshiro, one of the five Kyuujo, has more than enough power to sway the opinions of the nation, but, unfortunately, he too believes in the change.
"Nobody ever said peace was an everlasting thing…" Asami drolled, chuckling weakly.
*HRRNG!*
Asami's body jumped, her eyes widening. Her senses were running rampant without any warning. The blue-haired woman surveyed the area and found nothing out of the ordinary. So far, she could discern only one blaring problem, but it then grew to two, then three, and so on.
"It's spread out throughout Heiwa no Kabe," Asami said. "...but what could it be?"
XXX
In an instant, Tanjo could feel the sinister waves of the explosives' charges in the distance, his heart racing intensely. The first bomb Tanjo could sense was not too far, but again, he only had thirty seconds to begin with, which is already pared down to fifteen and counting.
Along with the first bomb, nine others reached Tanjo's senses, alerting him. The Heiwa no Kabe was large, immensely so. But if he wished to save the people of this conurbation, he had to move fast.
"Three, two, one… now!"
Shortly after a brief countdown, which Tanjo had used to prepare himself, the boy raced throughout Heiwa no Kabe and all of its pathways, rushing through all of the endangered civilians. The more Tanjo traversed through the civilization, the more he realized just how many lives were at stake.
'Way into the thousands…'
In just a few seconds, five at most, Tanjo arrived at the first bomb. It was a square device that clung to the side of the short building.
*SWOOSH!*
Without hesitation, the jet-black-haired boy sliced an outline of the bomb off the wall. If Tanjo had tried to destroy it, it could have exploded immediately, so he had to think of an alternative. A bad one.
Not intending to waste any time, Tanjo dashed off again with the bomb in his arms. There were roughly ten seconds left until the rest of the bombs were detonated.
"I have to go faster than this!"
In an attempt to boost himself, Tanjo fueled his legs with potent magic. Within his mind, he envisioned a sunflower. A sunflower was the same color as the yellow Aura Sense, the fastest of the four Aura Senses.
"Yellow!" Tanjo hollered, his speed inclining greatly.
In two seconds, Tanjo had ran seven miles and sliced off another bomb that was planted on the wall of a building, carrying it with him as he directed himself toward the next explosive.
Eight seconds remain; eight more bombs must be caught.
Tanjo was nothing but a yellow blur to the eyes of pedestrians, moving far too fast for anyone to recognize who or what he was.
The next bomb was twelve miles away, and Tanjo had reached it in four seconds. Similar to the other two bombs, Tanjo detached this one from a building and embraced it, only to disappear again in search of the others.
There are seven bombs left; four seconds remain.
"Faster!"
Eventually, Tanjo reached the point of vanishing into thin air as he ran, time slowing down around him. With the assisting speed, Tanjo collected his third bomb in two seconds, which was fourteen miles away. Six left; two seconds remain.
"Faster!"
In the next second, the jet-black-haired boy strained his body and mind to acquire five more bombs, each ranging from ten to fifteen miles apart from one another. Tanjo's arms were full of the explosives, nearly dropping them as he continued his pursuit of the very last bomb.
'Even if I get the last bomb, I still have to get away from the people before it explodes!'
One bomb left; one second remaining.
It only took half of that second for Tanjo to find the bomb, his eyes locking onto the destructive device. The boy lunged for the bomb, his hand releasing a beam that excised the device from the wall and immediately piled it on top of the nine other bombs in his arms.
There were no bombs left—but no time left either.
Gradually, as time slowed down for Tanjo, the boy could see as each device started to glow and the heat within them started to become intense.
"I've got no time!"
Tanjo quickly placed a blue bubble of magic around the stack of bombs and—*WOOSH!*—hopped into the air, separating himself from Heiwa no Kabe. As the boy leaped, the explosive devices succumbed to the ever-growing charge inside them and imploded; the eruption was slow but volatile.
"Faster!"
Then, Tanjo achieved light speed, flinging himself into the atmosphere with the bombs in just a measly hundred milliseconds. Once the boy was high enough, he grabbed the bubble of blue magic in his arms, placed it in his right palm, and launched the ten explosive devices into the empty vastness of space with one mighty toss.
"HA!"
The boy watched as the bubble he tossed into space was decimated by a ferocious explosion that proceeded to grow larger. Tanjo's body was being pulled back down to the Earth's surface by gravity and was no longer traveling at light speed.
'That… sucked…' Tanjo pushed one final thought out before becoming engulfed in flames, spawned from the sheer speed and force of his body propelling back down to his home planet.
XXX
Asami's perplexed mind was still ongoing, but she could no longer feel the odd sensation of impending danger. It was as if they were snuffed out one by one.
"What the hell is happening?" Asami asked herself, scratching her cheek mindlessly.
Before any ideas could wash over Asami's mind, the sky had suddenly darkened for a short moment, warranting a questionable gaze from everyone on the ground. It was a ball of fire, steadily crashing down from above.
However, it emitted a familiar sensation.
"Tanjo!?" Asami shouted in a daze, her eyes following as her underling's body fell from the sky.
The magic radiating off of the falling mystery felt exactly like Tanjo's, causing Asami to wait for the boy to fall closer to the ground and then swiftly soar through the air and catch him mid-air.
In her arms, the boy had his eyes closed, but his entire body was filled with his Aura Sense. He must have been bracing for the previously inevitable impact of slamming into the Earth.
"Hey! Wakey wakey!" Asami called out to Tanjo, making the boy open his eyes.
As Asami landed on the ground once more, she gently put the boy down, allowing Tanjo to stand on his own. His cloak was slightly seared, but nothing too noticeable. Luckily, the cloak had been made out of some durable material, just as Asami liked it. Obviously, all of her clothes had to be able to withstand her everyday life.
"Are we still in Shanti?" Tanjo quizzed as he stood tall, looking all around him. "...Sadly."
Asami chuckled. "What the hell happened to you?"
The jet-black-haired boy inhaled deeply. "Let's get out of Shanti first, please. I'm not sure how the warriors here will appreciate me running all throughout this place."
The blue-haired woman's curiosity piqued. "Sounds like a plan, Tanjo. Besides, I'm officially a fugitive here."
"What!? What did you do!?" Tanjo replied with a holler, his mouth gaped.
Asami only emitted another chuckle, smiling. "Let's get out of Shanti first, okay?"
XXX
Hey! I've been slacking slightly, but I managed to conjure up this chapter at a much earlier time than my usual release! I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! Things may have felt rushed, but again, anything can happen, and in a world full of warriors—things move pretty fast! Anyways, stay tuned for more!
Have a Great Day!
Peace - Cr1ticalz_