Seeing the clueless expression on Loki's face, Beni added "You see, I'm the one appointed to keep a watch on everybody in here to ensure no one leaves and you're one of them."
The young man continued to smile and on seeing Loki gesture [I want to meet my sister's]. His smile widened and he replied;
"I want to impress my father too."He said, his legs wide apart and his hand on his armored loin belt. He stood in opposition to Loki.
Seeing this Loki's eyes narrowed and seemed to turn darker, his war spirit ignited and his bloodlust oozed out. The smile on Beni's face fell and his brown eyes narrowed, ready to act. The captives' eyes' widened as they all had a bad premonition.
A fight was finally going to commence. And they'll be the collateral damage. The thought made many of them shiver and curse their luck.
Loki's hairpin shook before suddenly he zoomed forward, crisp streaks of red lightning snaking around him as he kicked Beni in the guts, hurling him towards a nearby deep fryer.
His back hit the edge of the deep fryer and cave it in. Hot oil spilled on his mantle but nothing happened to it except that the oil slipped off.
The force bent him over and his head almost got whelmed in the oil if not for him maneuvering his body at the last moment. He gritted his teeth, strained to resist the force, and straightened up.
He met face-to-face with the overbearing figure of Loki who had a hairpin revolving around him— the same hairpin he ate with. The hairpin made a snapping sound and shifted into a cannula sword abruptly and placed itself in Loki's grip.
The hearts of the hostages skipped a beat on seeing this.
The sword in Loki's grip was cannular in shape and was long with a pointed tip, its hilt long with a round crystalline pommel and no guard.
It appeared blunt but the feeling it gave was as sharp as a double-edged sword. The patterns on it faintly glowed red as he walked towards the young man with brown eyes.
Loki stood firmly in place, his sword tip pointing to the ground and ready to draw blood. Lightning sparkled around his body like Tantrum Wyrms zigzagging in and out of the earth.
He had waited for this moment, to release his bloodlust, to shed blood.
Beni unsheathed his swords in an instant. Two backswords with a long handle and skull-shaped pommel.
The two faced each other, the air grew tense with every second that went by and the poor hostages that were bonded to the sides were suffocating from the pressure.
To their gratitude, Bianca and bennitte stepped in at that moment causing Beni to look and frown, confused as to how they ended up in such a state.
"...Beni, don't ask anything, we need to leave."Beni was about to ask but he was cut short by his mother. Loki on the other hand was also confused, but it didn't take long before he reached a deduction after cognitive thoughts.
"Where's father?"Bennitte asked and like the father had been waiting, a door opened at the far end of the spacious kitchen, and a man's serious face popped up.
"Come on losers! They'll be here any moment."Duiro yelled in urgency.
"Let's go..."The mother said and walked towards the exit with Benitte following behind but Beni didn't, because he could feel that Loki was hell-bent on killing him.
Except for stealing and scheming, he wasn't that much of a fighter, so he did what he was best at. He turned around and prepared to run towards the exit but Loki acted faster.
Seeing Loki get closer to him, he stealthily took a bottle from his mantle and flipped the lid open as he turned around and poured the red powdery and glistening content on Loki's face.
The red powdery substance entered Loki's eyes and forehead, making Loki freeze in his tracks. Beni on the other hand gave himself a thumbs up and ran towards the exit like something was chasing him. Well, time was.
Loki fell to the floor, his eyes unfocused and wide open, but he wasn't seeing what he was supposed to see—that is, his surroundings.
What he was seeing was a memory that he had long buried in the deepest part of his spirit. But the mysterious substance fetched it out like magic.
He saw crimson-tainted water all around, whelming his entire being. Crimson seaweeds with spiky protrusions and whip-like forms coiled around him, drawing blood from his flesh.
Sediments, bones and skulls, crimson clay of decayed interns, and abyssal chasms that served as residences for unimaginable monstrosities lay below his feet.
He struggled, but that only aroused the gory wastes around him, his visage turned impure crimson, and bones and decayed organs bubbled.
He struggled to swim, to break free from the spiky spiral weeds restraining him but all proved futile. Unable to breathe anymore his mouth opened and the gory fluid invaded his throat, making his consciousness blur.
But then, a light pierced the floating crimson sediments that blurred his vision. Light rifted through the cloud of gruesomeness and blinded him for a moment, causing him to close his eyes momentarily.
He opened his eyes back and a kitchen met him, dead silence and the terrified gaze of the hostages. They all wondered what might have gone wrong with him to have emitted such bloodlust that made them even hallucinate their deaths in his hands.
Loki on the other hand had a face devoid of emotions. He looked towards the exit, the bloodlust he emitted intensifying. His mind was in utter chaos and his spirit craved the blood of the one who made him have the memory that still scares him to this day.
Turns out the memory of his darkest time was his terror and that terror causes his bloodlust to rise exponentially.
His crimson eyes sparkled with crisp lightning and soon his body followed, crackling with an intensity that pushed him forward with such speed that he entered the spirit dimension, momentarily as a passage.
But in the material world, he was like a streak of lightning that chased after beni but stopped as he reached a dead end after exiting the door. All it took was a blink.
But it wasn't a dead end. There was a ladder on the wall that extended upwards to the rooftop, but he didn't see any soul, nor did he sense any nearby, except for those that were sleeping peacefully in their apartments.
He sighed and swore in his heart, ingrained Beni's face into his mind, and etched a promise to his spirit. He'll never forget Beni.
Not bothering to look for Beni anymore as they would have left already. He went back to his sisters. In a flash of lightning.
...
On the floor of the changing room, sitting with her back supported by the wall, Zoe was talking to herself— or rather, to The Empress.
"Empress, check the state of my left leg, it still hurts, a lot..."Zoe stiffly said to The Empress whose face showed up on the suit on being summoned.
The sentient suit's texture turned a bit muddy at the ankle area and turned normal again, then Empress's voice came out.
"Dislocated with mild fracture due to the brute force exerted on it. A perfectly executed bone-breaking technique."The Empress monotonously said.
"Can you shift my leg back to its normal position? It hurts both emotionally and physically to see it in that shape."Zoe said, looking at her left leg which bent unnaturally to the side.
The texture of the suit turned muddy again and started shifting Zoe's leg to its right position. Although unorthodox and painful. It worked in adjusting the shape.
"Done!"Empress said but then continued "Zoe, I can't believe a mortal can trash you this much. Was the time we spent at the citadel just living a life of a spoilt empress?"
Zoe also happened to think about the same thing, her eyebrows knitted and she spoke looking at the ceiling in a daze, reminiscing the thousands of years she had used in the citadel, yet it seemed as though just a day passed.
"Are we just immortals because we have longer lives than the mortals? We don't even know the uniqueness of our powers yet. As father used to say, all are unique."Zoe said. Strangely, her voice carried a tone of wonder, sweet to the ears of the eavesdropper.
"Have we been living in a Haven and now we are in a real-world devoid of discrimination? I must say though, it's quite thrilling Haha!"The Empress laughed which broke Zoe's wonderous thoughts and tranced state.
She looked at the sentient suit and asked in disbelief "Empress, your voice, you can express emotions now?"
To which The Empress replied simply "Have you heard yours?"Then her face vanished from the surface of the suit.
The feeling of thrill coursed through Zoe as she remembered her fight with bianca. She looked at her right hand which had been impaled by a bolt that stuck in between.
Not knowing the expression she was making she had no control over her facial muscles.
It was then that her eyes wandered towards the hole in the wall and spotted kitty who was leaning on the wall, smiling mischievously and flicking her eyebrows at her.
This infuriated Zoe. Had she been listening and she didn't even sense her? But alas instead of a glare, her lips widened into a smile on its own.
Her lips quivered and her eyes shook in their sockets, she tried to control her expression but to no avail, until eventually, she shook her head and smacked it before her signature blank expression finally resurfaced.
"Sorry, Take it easy..."Kitty made a dramatic sympathetic expression on seeing Zoe's display before looking at her dislocated leg "...That looks like it hurts, heh..."
She scoffed at Zoe who was now glaring at her. She had indirectly made Zoe pay back for what she did to her on the rooftop in twofold and even Zoe seem to have figured that out.
It was then that Zoe also saw the state in which Kitty was and it was nothing but bad. The cut across her left eye was even scarier.
"...Ew, your left eye is blind and your flatness didn't protect your ribs," Zoe taunted, although her face was indifferent, her tone was full of derision.