"Ha," Shin scoffed, resting his hands akimbo and standing over Kai with the most amused expression any of his friends had ever seen on him, it took only a few seconds after Kai fell unconscious before the man began laughing outright, shaking his head with a teasing tone and an even more teasing attitude to his walk over to the others. It was also then that Ava furrowed her brows and looked around.
Everything that had happened to that point had taken place over the space if an hour, yet, nobody had shown up, nobody had intervened at all; no law enforcement, no firefighters, not even civilians were present, aside from that one woman who ran off after Kai smashed the officer's head in the road; they had seen nobody else.
Andrew was of the same thought as Ava, but only after he had been assured by the craziness he'd just witnessed that they were in the clear and not about to be killed for reasons obscure to him.
"Where is everyone else, what happened to all the people who were here before?" he asked.
"And here I thought you knew about Cloud technology," Rai commented rather than acknowlwdge the question.
"Does it even matter?" Ava walked over to Kai, noting that she was not stopped or threatened anymore. "Kai..." She knelt next to him, slowly and delicately raising his broken hand and cradling it.
"Was it necessary to go this far?" She turned to them with a gaze sharp and poisoned with anger. "He has only ever wanted to be left alone!"
"That can never happen." Yui calmly and almost sweetly cut her off, taking a knee on his other side and holding her hand on his cheek. "He needs someone with him at all times."
"I'll do it," Ava volunteered before the woman even finished thinking of the sentence she wanted to speak. "Whatever he needs, I will do it." She stared up at her.
"Do you even know what you're saying?" Shin asked, finally coming off his high after finding someone amusing. "Everywhere he goes, everyone he associates himself with, you will all meet your ends trying to be near him, that kid is cursed to be a vessel of Hél-"
"He told me that already, I already know what will happen" Ava shook her head, refusing to show fear in a situation that required it. "I already know what happens to me if I stay at his side, I barely know him, but he's already put his life on the line for me three times."
"Similarly I would gladly put mine on the line if it meant he lived, even a little longer." She pushed Yui's hand away and slowly laid across Kai's torso protecting him with her body. "I'm an idiot; that's what he said."
"I won't let you take him away."
"Hm," Rai stared at Shin, wondering what he would do about this girl, but despite all the leader of their group had done before, he was shocked when Shin huffed and walked to the middle of the road. "What are you doing?"
"Come on gang, we're leaving," Shin hummed tapping his wristwatch several times and looking to the skies with is hand shielding his eyes when a bright light started descending towards them.
"After all that you're gonna just leave him?" Yui stood and rested her hands akimbo. "What was the point of the test then?" She asked.
"He is strong enough to deal with the basic demon in the physical world, he can survive for a while on his own, I'll leave a familiar nearby to monitor him and see how it goes-"
"Shin, if the Council finds out about him they will spare no effort to put him six under," Tami stood at his side. "You know this."
"Unless someone here is stupid enough to say something," Shin looked at his feet when all four of them began ascending from the beam of light. "Then there is nothing to worry about for now, let him be, the world ends soon anyway."
"You'll just leave... just like that?" Andrew stared at them, not minding the impossible aspect of what was happening as he focused more on the subject at hand.
"Good luck with the collapse, if you make it, I might consider making you my student, Andrew." Rai stared at him, ignoring his question as much as Yui had ignored Ava's.
Upon the four strangers disappearing, a veil of shadow they hadn't noticed melted from around them causing a fresh flood of air to rush in, revealing that they had been cut off from the outside world all along.
"Hey, you!" A police officer came running as well as two paramedics and a news team. "Stay away from him!" Ava snapped when the people started surrounding them, with the cameraman aiming his device at the two bodies in the background and military vehicles closing in.
"I said stay away...!" Ava swung her hand at one of the female paramedics who tried moving him but was immediately struck in the back of her head by the nearest soldier, her vision going spotty and her arms limply swinging again as she fell on top of Kai a second time.
"Ava-" Andrew next was knocked unconscious after being tackled to the ground by several soldiers.
"Careful, this one is hurt," The paramedic woman rolled Ava off Kai's chest, carefully sheathed his hand in an open cast and rested it on his chest, making gestures that the others help her move him.
"What about these ones?" One officer asked, gesturing to Andrew and Ava who were being hefted over the shoulders of one very large man.
"They associated with him, they might be dangerous as well, take them just in case." The woman responded, stepping into the back of a van that had been reversed onto the lawn.
"And the witnesses?" The large man asked tossing Andrew and Ava into the Van carelessly while the news was covering the whole thing.
"We have reached a point where the media is irrelevant, social statuses are meaningless, soon there will be nothing in hiding; the world ends soon, Herman, nothing we used to spend our days hyperfocused on is relevant anymore."
The woman answered his question with a chuckle, watching them carefully slide Kai into the van and then smiling at him and resting her hand on his forehead. "Something as trivial as national security is a ridiculous concept in the face of complete global collapse.
"Kai Mora was to be obtained at any cost, it's already a miracle that the Cloud didn't kill him, we should be glad things worked out in our favour."