Chereads / Aether: The Dark City / Chapter 55 - Chapter Fifty Two: Preemptive

Chapter 55 - Chapter Fifty Two: Preemptive

He looked around at his team, all of them sitting in Delta's office while Angel and Hidden Moon listened in via call.

"We've had a few bumps here, and I know things are looking tough, but we're going to make it through this," he started.

Silas had a worried expression on her face, an interesting counterpoint with Scalpel's look of disbelief.

Ignoring them both, Ronin looked around the room again and said, "Trigger's gone for now...but we'll find a way to get him back. The Cathols have a weapon that might very well be capable of destroying all of us, but that takes at least 10 more days to finish charging."

 Mira raised her hand and she said, as Ronin pointed at her, "This is a terrible pep talk."

Scalpel nodded and said, "If you're working up to us leaving, I absolutely refuse. Too many people need me here."

 The room nodded it's assent to this belief and Ronin smiled and said, "Are you all thinking of leaving? I don't want to leave. No, I want to stay here, and I want to carve the High Cathols a brand new hole!"

He slammed his hands on the desk in front of him and said, "We're Guildless too, and frankly, last time I checked, Ghosts don't abandon their own!"

 Hidden Moon spoke up and said, "None of the other Guildless are Ghosts, Ronin."

Ronin nodded and said, "You're right. We're the ones with the most actual combat experience. We're the ones who have developed the tech that half of the Cathols are using to kill our fellow Guildless. We're the ones best suited to help the Guildless stop the Cathols."

Pulling up a hologram in the center of the room, Ronin pointed at various places and said, "Mira, Azue, I want the two of you to hit any far outposts the Cathols may have, that's where they'd marshall forces outside of the city to march in. Kill or show mercy as you see fit.

Scalpel, Delta, you're both doing amazing work here, I want you to stay here and keep it up.

Silas, Sellius, you're with me, we're going to pay the High Cathols a visit."

Everyone in the room, emboldened by his orders, voiced their agreement as Hidden Moon and Angel asked what they could do.

Ronin turned to the screens and said, "Both of you need to get as many Guildless off the streets as possible, what I'm planning will most likely draw, at the very least, Trigger and the steam-bound warrior out of hiding."

Silas asked quietly, "You're not worried about that?"

 Moira appeared on a screen and said, "No, ma'am. Master has an excellent plan in place to deal with the two of them, hopefully at the same time."

"I'm going to try and bring Trigger back and stop the steam-bound warrior at the same time," Ronin said, his face serious. 

Clapping his hands, Ronin dismissed everyone to get ready and later that night, at midnight, began his approach on the main Cathol headquarters.

Even larger than the Horizon Suns' headquarters, it stood as a massive testament to the power of those willing to stomp on the weakest members of society.

Looking at his partners, he asked his group, "Everyone in position?"

 On the edges of the city, surrounded by a thin mist wall Azue had created, she and Mira voiced their all go.

Scalpel and Delta both said they were ready and Hidden Moon and Angel did the same.

Tapping through his inventory, Ronin pulled out a weapon designed to destroy entire fortresses and aimed it at the main door.

The device powered up and shot a massive blast of Aetheric energy at it, disintegrating a massive circle in the doorway.

Deep in Cathol territory, Ronin had expected that to be enough to draw out a small army, but other than the crackling of the burning door, the street was totally silent.

In the silence however, three people walked out of the hole in the door, moving silently and with a steady pace.

Smirking at them, Ronin fired the weapon again, only to be surprised when the shortest of the three raised their hand and a wall of shining stone rose from the ground and absorbed the blast, firing it back at them.

Barely getting out of the way, the trio watched the blast of energy totally destroy a building behind them, reducing it to rubble in seconds.

The short one spoke, their voice high and feminine, "I did remember you being too clever for your own good, Ronin."

Her hands and eyes, from beneath the hooded cloak, glowed bright white as she continued walking toward him.

The white light from her hands dripped like water, flowers and plants growing anywhere the shining liquid touched, seeming to be birthed from the stone and metal themselves.

A burst of steam flowed off of the the person walking farthest to the left, the person in the center hidden beneath a red cloak that was painfully familiar.

"Trigger...no…," Ronin said as he realized who it was.

Moira spoke, her voice ringing through everyone's minds through their V.U.I's as she said, "That's not Trigger...I think...I think the man you know as Trigger is dead. This man's name is War."

Ronin spoke as she finished, his voice sad and body aching, "War...Death's Herald."

As he finished speaking, the man who had once been his friend raised his revolver at him, aiming for a split second before firing.

A hundred bullets flew from nowhere in a spiral directly at Ronin, tracing his path as he tried to avoid them.

Racing toward his friend, Ronin screamed, "Trigger, it's me!"

 Reaching the trio, Ronin saw that War was crying, tears flowing nonstop from his eyes even as he twisted to match Ronin's position, firing again, sending another hundred bullets at Ronin's head and where he might be.

Moira shouted in Ronin's mind, "Master, we need to move, we're right in the trajectory of the bullets."

 Narrowing his eyes angrily, Ronin pulled a sword from his V.U.I. and deflected each bullet back at the woman in the white cloak as he ran.

Stepping in her path, the steam-bound warrior simply allowed them to strike it, it's laugh demonic through the voice modulator in the helmet it wore.

War spoke, and his voice echoed through Ronin's very soul, "Run, Ronin. You can't stop us. You can't do anything. You're out of time."

The warrior moved menacingly toward Ronin and he felt Moira begin straining herself. For a brief moment, Ronin could see where the warrior would be, it's body a blue outline along a path it seemed intent on taking.

Swinging his sword at where the warrior would be, the outline disappeared as he struck it, sending it flying backward as fast as it had done to him in Old Central Park.

Bouncing along the ground, the warrior's helmet was shaken off and Ronin stopped in his tracks as he saw something he'd never expected.

The warrior rolled several more feet before digging it's fingers into the ground and stopping itself, sliding a little backwards.

The white hooded woman spoke, a familiar voice that Ronin couldn't quite place, "I figured this would be...fitting, Ronin."

The warrior stood and glared, eyes burning with hate, at Ronin, long hair flowing like liquid beauty from where it had been tied up within the helmet.

Stalking toward Ronin, the warrior watched with sadistic joy as he fell to his knees, this last revelation, hitting as hard as Trigger's defection to the High Cathols.

"Liliana," he said quietly.

She reached him and kicked him in the chest as she said, "Bastard."

Ronin flew limply through the air, his body slamming against building after building until he landed and rolled back on the ground.

"Master, I've strengthened your bones with Aether, but we can't take something like that again, we need to get away," Moira said, her voice panicked.

At the edges of his mind, Ronin heard her, knew she was right, but he was consumed by this feeling, one he couldn't identify.

Without knowing why, he stood back up and began walking back toward the trio, his mind empty with the exception of this feeling racing through his heart.

He'd reached the edges of what he could accept.

He thought he was mad, furious with the betrayal of a woman who'd once told him she loved him.

He'd thought he was sad, crushed by the loss of a dear friend to the very thing he hated.

He'd thought, he'd thought, he'd thought, he'd thought he understood.

What he was doing.

Where he was taking his team.

Who his enemies were.

Thought he'd come to grips with his own humanity...or perhaps...the lack of it.

As his mind raced, Moira began shouting, "Master, please, you need to calm down!"

His black eyes flickered red, glowing as brightly as those of the man who'd tossed him around in the Full Moon.

There was only silence, there was only calm around him and the ground around him seemed to glimmer with a silvery sheen.

In the distance, two people glimmered gold in his vision, bits of blue flickering in their shimmering aura.

He saw where they would move, saw what they would do.

Looking at his hands, he saw that they were covered in a transparent silvery aura themselves.

He could feel it in his heart, like nothing he'd ever felt before when Moira's voice came back, strangely calm and focused,

"Strike them down, Master."

 His mind, filled with a new purpose, simple and direct, became focused entirely on how to do such a thing.

Hundreds of their glimmering blue outlines appeared in hundreds of places as he, with Moira's help, plotted where they'd go, what they'd do. Lists of their abilities and known skills flashed in his vision and his eyes flickered from red to blue and their gold auras disappeared, replaced with only their blue outlines.

Moving fast, faster than he thought he could, he was upon them, blade drawn at the betrayer, gun pointed at the one he'd lost.

Liliana tried to react, but Ronin's gaze was empty as he swung his sword and cast her aside like chaff. He spoke as she flew away from him, "Barely worth the effort."

Moving faster than Liliana had, Trigger turned to him and shot. Watching the bullets fly at him in slow motion, Ronin caught each of them without effort and crushed them into a blob of metal in his bare hand..

Stepping away from him, Trigger shot and shot again, though Ronin simply sidestepped each of his barrages.

Punching Trigger toward the church, he continued walking toward his third enemy who said, "I'd have never imagined that you got that. You really must be special, Ronin."

Waving her hand, Ronin found himself covered in the shining white water, and within seconds, his focus was gone, the outlines had disappeared and Silas and Sellius were standing over him.

"He's waking up, Scalpel," Silas said, concern audible in her voice.

Pushing himself up, Ronin asked, "Where did they go?"

Sellius looked around at the daylight streaming into the street and said, "They've been gone for hours, Ronin. At least this time you kicked some ass."

 Dozens of people surrounded them as a message played over the loudspeaker mounted on the church.

"Today's daily scripture is as follows, 'And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given to him a great sword.'"

Listening with a sad sigh, Ronin thought of Trigger, bound in red and hate, and said, "War's arrived."