#I might end up physically brawling with my history lecturer

[dampfoxes]

not to be dramatic but

[vyther16]

wip wednesday: murder turtle edition

more wen!wwx au, this time with that barely mentioned Qin Su portion from before. Idk what canon this takes place in. probably some unholy mishmash of novel and cql with emphasis on cql. if it’s unclear, murder turtle refers to the Xuanwu of Slaughter

for context of the au, wwx ended up kinda adopted? by the Burial Mounds after his parents died, and then Wen Ruohan’s wife found him and took him in. blah blah blah wrh evil blah blah blah demonic cultivation blah blah blah handwavey magic stuff. that’s why wwx is already a “demonic cultivator” during the murder turtle sequence

“What are we fighting?” Jin Zixuan asks, and Wei Wuxian would be proud of the character development the Jin Sect Heir has obviously gone through if the resentful energy in this cave weren’t so cloyingly thick.

He presses a hand to his forehead, then focuses his attention inward, to the steady thrum of his golden core.

“Wei Wuxian?” Wen Qing murmurs, coming to walk next to him. Wen Chao is prattling on to the other sects’ disciples. The resentful energy resolves itself into screaming.

“It’s loud,” Wei Wuxian says finally. It’s not as loud as Yiling was, as the Burial Mounds were, when he was smaller. The voices here aren’t calling for revenge. 

They’re just screaming.

Wei Wuxian is brought back to himself when he’s shoved down the side of a cliff. That’s inside of a cave. He wants to laugh at the irony, except the voices are louder down here.

He thinks about screaming himself, but then someone is pulling him to his feet.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says. “Are you alright?”

He nods. “Yeah, Lan Zhan,” he says, because he’s perfectly fine physically. The only thing the voices are doing is screaming. They aren’t actually hurting him.

Lan Zhan frowns, eyebrows drawing closer together, but before he can say anything, the rest of the guest disciples come down. 

--

“They’ve cut the ropes,” Jin Zixuan says, throwing the limp ropes back down. Some of the Yao disciples start bickering about their parents. Wei Wuxian wants to scream, because half the disciple here still won’t trust him, his core is sealed indefinitely, Wen Zhuliu took Suibian, and the resentful energy is still screaming at him.

“There is an exit,” Lan Zhan says, voice steady. Wei Wuxian turns to look at him, hissing when even the small movement pulls at the new brand on his chest.

When the other disciples look apprehensive, Lan Zhan turns towards the Xuanwu’s part of the cave. “There were maple leaves,” he clarifies, and Jiang Wanyin nods.

“Yes, there must be an opening. If someone can distract the Xuanwu, I can swim down and find it,” he offers. Lan Zhan hums an affirmative.

Wei Wuxian winces as they get closer to the Xuanwu. The energy is thrumming with resentment, focusing in on... “There’s something in the turtle,” he says suddenly, and Lan Zhan and the other sect heirs turn to stare at him.

“What do you mean, in the turtle?” Jin Zixuan snaps, and wow, Wei Wuxian really underestimated the other boy. When he’s not being an arrogant peacock, he really is quite smart. He might even one day be worthy of Yanli-jie.

“There’s a-- a focal point for the resentful energy in its shell,” Wei Wuxian tries to explain, but it’s hard to think around the headache that has formed to explain something he just instinctively knows. “The spirits are-- they’re attached to it.” He drives more focus towards the point, and then all the voices scream in tandem, and Wei Wuxian’s hands go up to his ears as he stumbles back, hitting into other disciples, but he can’t find it in himself to care because it’s so loud. He might be screaming with them. He isn’t sure.

The Xuanwu rears up, roaring, and then something black shoots through the top of its shell and the turtle collapses into the water.

Wei Wuxian barely has time to register that before the world slips away from him. He hears Lan Zhan cry out his name and then he is aware of nothing more.

--

“What the hell did he just do?” Jiang Wanyin demands, and Lan Wangji finds he has no idea either. Jin Zixuan picks up one of the fallen torches and throws it at the water, but the Xuanwu doesn’t react.

“He killed it,” a Jin disciple says, her voice high and wavering. Wangji remembers her fighting in tandem with Jin Zixuan in the earlier skirmish.

“How?” A BalingOuyang disciple pushes to the front of the group. “He said resentful energy, then something about spirits?”

“His core was sealed. Was it demonic cultivation?” a Jiang disciple puts forth.

“Who cares how he did it; the thing’s dead!” a girl shouts. “Are we going to try to get out of here or stand around and prattle on like it’s a discussion conference!” She shoves her way to the front of the crowd, flanked on either side by older disciples from her sect. “Jiang Wanyin, you said you could swim down to find the opening the maple leaves came through?”

The Jiang Sect Heir looks properly cowed. “I’ll get on that, Qin-guniang,” he says, undoing his belt.

Once everyone is properly outside of the cave, Qin-guniang takes charge with relative ease. 

“Everyone form up by sect,” she calls, and her order is echoed by her disciples down the crowd. Wangji stays where he is holding Wei Ying, because he is the only Lan disciple here, and Wei Ying is the only Wen.

Jiang Wanyin and Jin Zixuan stand by Qin-guniang. She did not attend the lectures at Cloud Recesses; he does not know her name, even despite the fact she is obviously her sect’s heir. The Qin sect is very small; he cannot recall having learned anything about them aside from the fact that Jin Guangshan favours them.

“Now, Lanling is the closest great sect that is still standing; Yunmeng is a few days further, but more likely to accept all of us. Jin and Jin subsidiary sects can drop off at Lanling if they feel so inclined, but my sect is going to Yunmeng. They’re more likely to be amenable to retaliate against this blatant disrespect and violence from Qishan than Jin-zongzhu ever will be.” Qin-guniang folds her hands primly in front of her. 

“A’Su,” Jin Zixuan starts, but Qin-guniang makes a silencing motion with her hands.

“Don’t you A’Su me, Jin Zixuan, you know it’s true. Your father won’t step up until Wen Ruohan burns down Jinlintai like they did Cloud Recesses,” she snaps. Jin Zixuan looks properly chastised, but several Jin disciples look ready to start a brawl at the slight to their sect leader.

new game: count how many times I used the word scream or a variant in this snippet. 

i’m not really sure how wwx is already a demonic cultivator at this point in the story, but it’s got smth to do with the burial mounds taking him in as a child, bc i’m nixing the yin iron plot from cql. i think it’s dumb and pointless and i don’t want to deal with it. let wrh be evil without magic evil rocks. let xue yang be a street rat with no history. let wwx make an evil amulet from a magic sword that’s just a magic sword with no creepy nursery rhyme to go with it

(i’m keeping lan yi and her cave, just modified bc ancient lesbians and sacred ribbon ceremonies)

anyway, hope you enjoyed. next week will likely be hcs again, but for mdzs/cql ocs instead of jol/qyn characters. who knows. maybe it’ll be smth else.

[anangelicday-mrwolf]

Wolfsbane : Noblesse Fanfic (post-ending)

(previous chapter)

Chapter 50 – Yuhyung’s Scheme, and...

“What favor?”

Rael retorted, his posture frozen in poor coordination, a result of being interrupted when he was about to take a major leap towards KSA headquarter.

As he was waiting for Yuhyung’s following words, Rael was met with an unexpected heavy grit of the human’s upper and lower teeth, because of which he shifted his red irises towards the rear.

“What is it?”

The atmosphere perched upon his back turned grave out of blue, and Rael’s voice got graver to match it.

He could not fathom what could make such a hopelessly careless man so solemn without any warning.

“I know this is sudden, but I must ask you not to go to KSA.”

“What? What do you mean by that?”

“Please, could you take us to somewhere else? And I mean right now.”

They had not a second to waste for the QuadraNet project, and Rael could not be more baffled at Yuhyung’s request.

Still, as far as he was concerned, Yuhyung Jang was not the type to speak or behave with no reason, so Rael decided to give him ears.

“There’s someone after us.”

Right then Rael’s blonde hair made a rushed turn towards the speaker.

“What did you say?”

This cannot be.

I am the umbra unmatched, the sharpest steel of Kertias. There’s no way somebody, if anybody, could bypass my senses.

For the mere seconds he spent waiting for Yuhyung’s further details, the storm in Rael’s brain took his cognition towards deepest dread.

Normally he would have begun retracing everything he knows and has done until now, to ultimately and calmly deduce the most likely case that is at work at the moment.

However, he was held back by the barely-made progress of the QuadraNet project and the hardly-improved relation with the Kertia patriarchs.

What if someone did deceive my senses?

What if such qualified enemy is indeed stalking us?

What if I just went ahead and invited such surely-powerful foe to the KSA’s domain AND the country that the Noblesse has made his home?

And what if it turns out I raised the curtains for the sequel of Ignes’s assault on KSA or the trigger of this human’s trauma?

Rael could see the reprimanding faces of patriarchs ghosting within his vision.

His legs would have given out if Yuhyung had not called him once more.

“Uh, allow me to rephrase that. There’s someone after you.”

To me alone?

Does this mean this pursuer has something personal to deal with me, unrelated to Lukedonia or QuadraNet or the Union?

The tremor that was creeping over Rael’s entire shape was relatively gone.

Relatively.

“And I’d like to apologize... This is my fault.”

“What do you mean that it’s your fault?”

“Because this person is a noble just like you.”

“What? What do you...”

“There is this extremely pale man that looks like he’ll collapse if someone pokes him. Do you know him by any chance?”

“Deneb Illiness? Is that who you’re talking about?”

“Oh, that’s right. He called himself Deneb Illiness.”

Rael was aware that their history was not very beautiful.

Or rather, they had no history at all.

But is there a reason for him to chase me?

Above all, why is this human apologizing me regarding him?

Rael was busy rolling his eyes, and Yuhyung feigned guilt by tightening the entire muscles on his face.

“And for duration of my stay at Lukedonia... I served him as his eyes.”

Don’t tell me, muttered Rael in his head.

“He forecast that you’ll rarely separate yourself from me, as you are the Lukedonian ambassador for this project. So he demanded I spy on you for him.”

“...He told you to spy on me?”

“Y-yes... He said he should keep his eyes on you and even eliminate you if he has to, in order to get what he wants.”

Rael was shocked enough that someone has been trailing them from Lukedonia.

His shock was doubled upon finding out it was none other than Deneb Illiness.

Now his head was spinning to know that Yuhyung had been performing espionage behind everyone’s back for the noble with bloodless looks.

That did not mean the growth he had gone through during his strife against Union is entirely gone; despite that it took him a lot of effort to keep his lobes from being fragmented, his brain was slowly but surely whirring in process.

The only scenario he could think of to assign appropriate reason for Deneb to dare dream of watching and killing him, to the latter’s utmost displeasure, was a love triangle that involves Seira.

Though Deneb has never made his obsession with Seira conspicuous in Rael’s presence, the Kertia’s memories unfortunately remained vivid in terms of the nightmarish tea party during which he was relentlessly ripped apart by the non-octaclans.

Now he could see so very well what Deneb intended during the said tea party; it was no task at all for Rael to link the enlightenment to the fact that Deneb was currently on the chase for him.

“So, did he slip that he’ll be coming all the way to Korea for me?”

“No, he warned me that once you depart, he will wait several minutes before he sets off, so that you wouldn’t notice how you have an uninvited guest looking for you. He added that once he gets caught in a battle with you... He will go all out against you, whether I’m there or not, lest you note we have a connection. He was basically telling me that I’m on my own when it comes to my life.”

“He didn’t order you to relay all this to me, did he?”

“No. Consider it my repentance, albeit late, for deceiving you and other nobles and being unable to beat his coercion and...”

Yuhyung deliberately let the end of his speech droop, in order to make taut the bond of faith Rael has attached to him.

He knew how Rael will react after this.

Rather, he was hoping he knew correctly.

Actually, there was no need to hope; he was already confident that his knowledge will be as true as it can be.

He remembered how that pallid noble admitted himself that his competence in combat cannot be even dubbed competence, compared to what Rael could exercise.

He even specified that he would last less than 3 seconds given that the Kertia pulls out something called soul weapon.

Yet Yuhyung knew that now Rael will recalibrate his destination so that he could settle this quietly by himself.

Based on what he had picked up during his business at Lukedonia, Rael Kertia is fatally conscious of himself.

Though Yuhyung had not the faintest idea who could make him so self-conscious, there was no doubt they were influential enough to make THE head of the Kertias fear his own word and action.

And Rael was severely afraid of providing them with reason to give him a heart-rending lecture, which Yuhyung assumed will be in effect whether he is within or beyond Lukedonian boundaries.

Which gave Yuhyung conclusion that he would not want to cause any trouble in Korea, no matter how brief or small it is.

Therefore, if he is to cast an idea that he must deal with Deneb by himself without anybody else’s awareness, Rael would not be able to walk away from such option.

“Are you going to be okay? I feel like we’re about to have a skirmish with your own kind. Uh, but I’m not questioning your fighting capabilities! They have already been deemed worthy during your struggle against the topmost modified humans from the Union.”

Rael’s lips remained zipped as he listened.

“B-but still... Forgive me for being nosy, but I’m worried you might get caught in trouble once your people find out that you had a physical issue with your own kind during your mission related to the QuadraNet project, though you’re not the cause...”

With the bait out in open, Yuhyung expected Rael to take a bite; and the noble did, by exhibiting awfully dense fear.

Rael’s face was invisible from Yuhyung’s angle; nevertheless, he could see what Rael was going through, thanks to the shiver Rael’s backside delivered to his chest, which was certainly not there before.

“...Don’t worry. I’ll make sure he will not lay his hands on you. And... I must ask you not to spill this to any other soul.”

“Oh, don’t you worry, sir! I happen to be going against my boss’s order to come back as soon as possible.”

“...Now, I shall take you there.”

“There...? What there?”

“I’m terribly sorry I must take you there, but... That’s the only place in this country that comes with an empty space big enough so I wouldn’t have to mind my surroundings during brawl.”

Rael said no more, and Yuhyung, having foreseen this, simply nodded to show his consent.

The spot that bloody chaos took place due to Lunark, Zarga, Urokai, and 8th Elder remains as a concrete desert that looks like a crater created by a gigantic meteor.

To Yuhyung, it is the birthplace of everything that had ever happened to him.

‘As much as I’m still unpleasant to even near that place, I suppose it’s only logical that I finish everything there.’

Rael told him once more to hold on tight, and Yuhyung followed suit, as his lips shrunk in infinitesimal rate.

I’m almost there.

Just a little bit more, and I’m gonna make it.

*****

Meanwhile, somewhere across the sea

Pow! Thud!

Pow!!!

The blue-black surface was being bombarded with an array of deafening noise and aquatic pillars humongous enough to swallow an apartment at least twelve stories high.

Faster... Faster! Come on, don’t fail me now, my legs!

Lunark had been mercilessly kicking across the sea ever since she had passed the shorelines of Korea.

During her race, the wrinkles rooted to her forehead and corners of her lips did not fade a bit.

She could only come up with the worst of the worst-case scenarios regarding what the definitely-to-shred-into-pieces man who repaid her beloved’s hospitality with betrayal would be up to at this very moment, which got renewed and worsened every second.

Which is why she could catch the silhouette of Frankenstein’s island much faster than usual.

She could soon behold the island’s face, and that was when her own face began to shift.

‘...Did my eyes choose to go on a strike because of the recent series of business trips I booked myself in a series? That island shouldn’t look like that.’

Lunark closed the distance with the island that had obviously gotten monochromatic in overall, and she found herself in stupefaction.

“What in the...?”

The heavenly sight that almost rid her of her purpose of visit during her introduction to the place was nowhere to be seen.

Everything – emerald-hued leaves and bushes, petals of thousand colors waltzing in the wind, and horde of butterflies flashing their mesmerizing natural dyes – were all gone, as if telling her that they were all her imaginations.

She was instead met with the aftermath of the scent from something burned and the concrete debris that had been flung to the corners of the island.

‘Did they put up a round while I was on my way?’

After a pregnant gulp, Lunark forced her half-petrified legs to move.

Before she could even take good several steps towards the building, she gasped at the mind-numbing, creepy feeling grasping her from head to toe.

It was, according to Lunark’s personal impression, what one would feel if death is made compatible with sixth sense.

And the only time she could ever feel like this happened when Frankenstein summoned the cursed weapon to brandish his cursed power.

Her mind already surmising that there was at least a bloodshed in this place, Lunark hurriedly ran, her cloak flying about behind her, until her eyes caught a figure ahead.

‘Is that him...?!’

(next chapter)

At the moment I happen to be composing chapters that feature battle scenes, but the chapters I’m posting didn’t even get started yet lol. Which reminded me that as much as I’m moving on to the highlight of this fic, I still have a long way to go until the finale. XD

[ratherhavetheblues]

ABBAS KIAROSTAMI’S TEN “Alright…”

© 2017 by James Clark

   Ten (2002) begins with a mother and her pre-adolescent son moving along the streets of Tehran in her car. Although a vicious, lacerating dispute takes place, which has an effect similar to stunning seasickness, we should, for the sake of the lucidity to be found in that stifling cabin cruiser (always seen from the inside) and the subsequent episodes of patrolling those roads, stand back, for a bit, from the opening emotional blood-letting and let ourselves be delighted by Corky, the LA cabby, and her fare, Victoria, the Hollywood talent scout, in the first episode of Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth (1991). The foul-mouth boy is a sort of talent scout, scouting the prospect of inducing his open-road mother to play the part of a stay-at-home-mom in a story made to garner acclaim from those demanding dutiful piety. The philosophical driver, like Corky, runs over the crock that rigid matrimony (like rigid fame) constitutes; and she lives to drive another day, and many other days.

    Whereas Victoria sees Corky’s point and wishes her well on her rocky road, Amin, the Tehran passenger—like the Idi Amin—discloses a vein of resentment toward interpersonal complication which, though aberrant, is also intrinsic. As such, Ten comprises a multi-faceted dialogue on the subject which could be termed, “How far do you want to investigate the phenomenon of love?” The first episode, labelled “10,” as affixed to the driver’s other drives which the film provides over a quite short period counting down to “1,” could be seen as a vividly dramatic study of the fallout of a divorce. (We learn, from the two major battles along that kinetic way, that the divorce occurred seven years ago, she has remarried, but her first husband—whom we see on several occasions, but always in a white jeep [evoking a UN bureaucratic Peace-Keeper, devoutly rule-driven, obsessed with an antiquated utopian end of strife]—an avid porn connoisseur, is less than able to contribute to putting together a serious support for his son; but that he has, in occasional contacts, become a factor nevertheless in inculcating Amin to a dogmatic primitiveness [linked to unpaid “activist” causes] which the driver had overcome. During the verbal brawl, she insists. “You’re like your father. He shut me away, destroyed me. He wanted me only for himself.” [At which point the clever primitive gives her a dagger-like sideways glance and commands, “Not so loud! Not so loud or I won’t listen to you…”] The skirmish turns to her demand, “I’ll say what I have to say” and his “I don’t want to listen” and cupping his ears.) However, as we look closely at the negotiations in the sanctuary of her smoothly-running vehicle, we realize that though Amin, true to his name, is a vicious, implacable thug, his mother (never named and thereby approximating an anonymity at the heart of her actions) is caught up in making an effort, an effort which has been repeated many times, to enlighten her son about the paradox of caring for a flesh-and-blood loved-one while belonging to something more. Episode 10, therefore, shows her (penultimate) folly in supposing a creature of Amin’s age and pathology would ever attain to anything resembling effective reflection.

   The driver, as we first encounter her new bid for mutual understanding in a deadened history, repeats the parable of a friend’s parents dragging themselves into hate and enfeeblement when a divorce would have given them a new lease on life. “I’m talking to you, let me finish. When I talk, you raise your voice…”/ ‘So what?” (Amin’s brush-offs are supplemented by arrogant, menacing and insulting visages and bodily attitudes, including an often seen rippling touch to his mouth as he heckles a deadly enemy.) “It’s impolite. Let me finish and you’ll understand” [the cosmic, not domestic situation]. You listen to everyone but you  refuse to listen to your own mother.”/ “Because you’re going to lecture me again. You always have to talk…” As we shall soon discover from the following encounters, the lady does bring to us an absorbing skill in silence and reticence. Accordingly, her next step in that trap she hasn’t fully figured out is to promise only two more sentences (“and I’ll shut up… never speak again…”). “I feel fulfilled now, like a flowing river. I was a stagnant pond. My brain was devastated.” The hardened midget (with a trace of a black moustache) shoots out, “That makes three sentences, and they’re all rubbish! I’ll never listen to you again!” The pact of silence now in shreds, there obtains a rapid-fire exchange, going nowhere. Picking up her dynamic priority as challenging Neanderthal stasis and old-time-family style, he sneers, “You only thought of yourself.” She fires back, “If you love yourself, you love someone else…” / “Enough! You talk too much!” the anointed thought-controller megaphones. She accurately posits, “You want me for yourself.” He declares, “I don’t want you to be mine! You screwed up… You stupid cow!” Once again, concluding much more than a family conflict, she drops him off at the swimming pool by saying, “A man who doesn’t love himself loves no one.” (Before that, she has broadcast to us, not him, “No one belongs to anyone. Not even you… You’re my child but you’re not mine. You belong to this world. We try to live here.” He cannily reconfigures the big picture to retail a comfortable little picture. “I have to grow up to attain an age that will allow me to belong to myself… You left. You crossed to the other side…”)

    As he leaves the ride, with the expected, “You stupid idiot… I’ve never seen anyone so stupid…” his domain—he on camera the whole passage—we see her for the first time emerging from the fringes, a figure of physical attractiveness, gentleness, deftness and confidence. Those gifts are on fascinating display for the remainder of the film. Although the outset might suggest she’s just a parent ferrying her child, we come to realize that the car and its motions are her real home, only incidentally playing host to a relative in the process of being a stupid idiot she used to know. With Amin snarling about the stepfather who does a lot more than the imam he calls dad, she quietly maintains, “But in any case he’s my friend and a good [though sometime] companion.” Make no mistake, though her sensibility is tolerant, generous, witty and incisive, she is an ultimate loner. Cutting from the one you’d hope would drown, she’s calmly in cruising mode (Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin [2013] probably owing something to it). But once again a relative, her sister, is on camera first. This latter passenger, though not flashing murderous glances, is disconcertingly anxious and depressed—pulling at her cheeks, fidgeting with a paper fan and casting crisis-level eyes to the streets as if she were riding in a tumbril. She’s in grey and black all round, making a sharp contrast to her driver-sister’s decorative scarlet robe and creamy-toned scarf, not to mention (as in the previous episode) chic Ray-Bans. The protagonist enters the car with a large bag of fruit, not exactly a bacchanal but putting us on notice that, as with Kiarostami, the Ayatollahs could be largely ignored and circumvented. The gloomy one pronounces, “6000 Tomas wasted…” But after a spate with Amin, the protagonist has come to a party mode no one’s going to spoil. Rather than trying to lighten up her sister, she, in the first of many gracious inventions in face of bad behavior, appeals to her theological, breaking-bread leanings. “It’s for the guests” [soon we learn that the home-alone friend is having a 39th birthday party]. The ascetic arm of the family sniffs, “I give classes every day. I have a job…” [in connection to which her young child has to be brought to the workplace]. (During a later incident with Amin, we hear that the protagonist needs a lot of time for her photography and painting. Kiarostami was a photographer and painter of some renown and cash-flow. The upshot of our free-spirit’s convening such difficult transactions is an assurance that when she gets down to her métiers sparks will fly.) The protagonist’s job being something seen by the stodgy wing of her family as a pseudo-occupation, the contrarian ne plus ultra proceeds to offer up a sensibility, while cruising those streets night and day, to bring up to speed the superior products of her investigative craft. Now, if not a laughing matter, at least a broadly smiling matter, she quips, “He won’t accuse you of abandoning him at playschool.” On a roll and rolling her funereal sister for what might pop out, she moots, “Today, children accuse parents of all kinds of things…” The leaden one states the obvious, “They’re wrong to. I mean parents can’t kill themselves…” The driver hits two notes at once by calling out, “Ah, is this a dead end?” The practical one informs, “A day-nursery isn’t always a good thing…But for age 3, especially for an only child, it’s ideal…” More tiny news for the bemused: “You know what’s wrong with Amin, sis? Amin convinces himself he’s unhappy…” She, having already seen the end-game, despite the need to marvel that sanity is beyond most earthlings, hears from the worrier, “Leave him be, let him go to his father’s to get to know him better. Don’t fool yourself…” Cueing up, where this countdown will lead, the driver seems to be at a (temporary?) loss with the devastation which her career entails. “I don’t know…” Then the perceived expert ushers the crisis along. “You grow fond of what you love.”/ “That’s right. I can’t deny it” [and she can’t deny that this is a tough terrain to cover]. Therefore, we’ve had a taste of something better than birthday cake, namely, a sort of Socratic dialogue; but unlike Socrates/ Plato the stakes are truly problematic, giving rise to endless inquiries and adjustments. The driver’s statement, “I’m waiting for him to realize that,” is sheer dark comedy. On the heels of that impasse, we receive the more farcical exit as she turns back to the traffic in the street and the traffic in the universe. “Look at that guy! What an idiot!”

   Down to story 8, she initially appears to us at ease in being silent and mobile and going along the prayer zone in a gown with a darker, black and gold design. (In the previous episodes she was wearing shades; in the rendezvous with Amin, a dark-red gown; in the soon-to-come being rid of him, a much brighter red gown and jade rings.) She stops to give a ride to an elderly woman, bent over and laboring, but with a resolve in her bearing which galvanizes our protagonist. “I’ll be like her one day,’ she says to herself with a cheery tone. She asks the lady, “Is this a dead-end?” And she’s shown in a roundabout way the path to the mausoleum/ prayer-room leaving open how beyond a dead-end this is. On first being seated, the passenger intones, “May God protect you,” the first of a stream of pious declarations. The driver affords this licence a patient and encouraging cordiality, seeking to find there a magical boost. “May He save us from all our worries…” follows quickly. Our guide for the duration is taken up with driving, not heart-to-heart troubles. “I’m lost. I don’t know this way…” Keeping a light tone, the ancient rattles off, “Well don’t go down here, it leads nowhere!” Now on the straight and narrow, the passenger delineates details of her, if not exuberant, prolific strivings. “I go in the morning, mid-day and sunset… I pray for the boys and girls… I pray for old ladies and men…” We know by now that Amin’s mother has large misgivings about such heavy zeal; and this episode wonderfully sets in relief the taste for gentle irony with which she hits the road. “You only go there to pray?”/ “I pray there and elsewhere.”/ “Are your wishes granted?”/ “God alone grants wishes. My prayers don’t need that [that is to say, the bid for union suffices beyond being rescued from death]. My husband is dead. My 12-year-old son, too… That’s why I pray [offsetting the calculus of loss]. I also sold my home to go to a pilgrimage in Syria…”

   From a secular perspective, inattentive to the zealot’s heretical grace, she’s lost; and our protagonist is in the forefront of secularity. Nevertheless, our poised talent scout accentuates the possibility of calculative cowardice being shattered by the sheer visceral flare-ups of the ancient’s recognition that an elusive balance is worth going for broke. “I’ve known great misfortune. But I gave everything I owned.” The eccentric mom praises the stranger’s “pretty rosary” and endures the loopiness of the banal brio she’s hearing. She can’t, however, be indifferent to features of the saga like a daughter’s stomach tumor and being afraid of the upcoming operation. She can see the desperate egotism in factors like, “I swear on the Imam Reza, I gave away the mattresses…” and yet the very hopelessness of this distemper (like the poison of her own son) touches her as endlessly significant. She enthuses with her guest, “Very good! The fewer ties you have the better you live.” The simple soul offers to car-sit while the sort of soulmate goes to pray. “No thank you. I have a lot to do…” is the way their paths diverge forever.

   Step 7, on the way to a blast-off of sorts, finds her at the wheel, beaming with the irony that, while cruising late at night on a hooker trail, she was mistaken for a John and invaded by a cynical entity; but, once again, a slice of something she wants to grasp. The poor vision of the “night worker” (in the parlance of The Wind Will Carry Us) traces straight to Corky’s Paris colleague in part 3 of Night on Earth, who, after losing his temper and throwing out a couple of delusional drunks in the night, gets hailed by a blind and Amin-like vicious, arrogant fare. “Stop here, I’m getting out,” the embarrassed pro demands. The driver, not surprisingly, answers, “I’m interested in talking with you…” In a sleepy voice, the reluctant conversationalist replies, once again (bringing to mind the blinded French stone wall), “Stop here, I’m getting out!” But when our protagonist takes special interest in being mistaken for a man, the night person gives out some inkling that she’s not totally benighted. She gleefully shrieks with the pitfall, again demands the ride end and the near-cabby promises, “A bit further on” [hoping that the cradle-dynamics of the drive and the volcano of that scream will produce some seismic information]. “I saw you come out of that Mercedes…” she hopefully cues some pop. First, the passenger draws the wall, “I’m going nowhere…Let me off!” But our guide is an ardent provocateur and hits pay dirt of sorts with, “Why do you do this?” After Amin-like bluster— “Give me a break… You want to lecture me?”—the wild card can’t resist declaiming, “An honest job, a decent job!” More squeals ensue. Then she feels a little needle: “It’s interesting… a girl like you [with aspirations I want to hear about]. Pretend that you’re a man…” She quickly insists, “I’m not working in that field yet!” Having seen a glimpse of her bourgeois self-justification, the protagonist persists, “No, really… What’s the reason you do this?” This elicits the hooker’s being hooked on two incompatible motives—the volatility of which perhaps leading somewhere for her own, far more comprehensive, study; and even more to the point, her ongoing bounce against the carnality of everyone she meets (a hooker’s body-contact being a dash of physicality with much on the ball). “Sex, Love, Sex” the captive blurts out. “That’s all life is?” the traveller, setting the horizon to be engaged, moots. “It’s a trade, it’s my job. And I like it [moreover]. What’s this ‘interesting?’” She goes on, from that confrontational stance, to assure the driver, “I’m not going to cry… It’s life or it’s destiny” [brutal zoology or subversive mysticism]. The driver assures her she’s not going to lecture. “I’m interested in your experience, what you feel, your sensations…” “What sensations?” she replies with some anger. “Don’t you think about sin and guilt” is the night-shift’s way of discerning how wild is the wild one (who, by then, has taken off her shoes to ease the pain of walking in shoes not made for walking). Though the passenger insists, “That was a stupid thing to say… Why don’t you try it yourself?” she shifts, by way of finding out that the near-cabby is married, into a screed about all men being traitors. “He says, ‘I love you,’ doesn’t he?” Her clients often say that when their wife calls, duped that he’s at the other office. This is where the flight hits real turbulence, the driver not apt to be greatly preoccupied with the low-key ways of her “friend and good companion.” The shoeless and rather clueless street walker even dovetails with Amin and that totally blind angry rider in Night on Earth: “You’re an idiot and I’m smart.” She purports to have no affection for any of her clients, nor anyone else. There is one more step to take and the protagonist takes it when inferring that her rough trade in the days before wholesaling touched her indelibly. “To wake up thinking about him! We were engaged. I was a fool.” The night may not have yielded any new talent; it did spotlight her close to frightening disinterestedness.

   Corky was induced, by the talent-scout, to admit she’d love to have children, that she has an ardent dream centered upon domesticity.  But her certainty about the perfidy of the male talent pool left us seeing her as a free spirit somewhat by default. The protagonist of our tale here clearly puts freedom first and evinces a highly eccentric but potentially fertile way of extending her powers, including interpersonal powers. The remainder of the snippet given to us largely pertains to ditching the monster from her craft. Accordingly, it sustains the sense of coping more effectively (which is far from coping more easily) in face of the impasses every ride must endure. Therefore, to deploy the motif of the protagonist’s vibrancy in a sharp light we’ll dip into the number four junket, where, in an atmosphere of very spare light, a woman relentlessly laments a man’s leaving her, with the kind of addictive melancholy seen in the last (Helsinki) phase of Night on Earth, where a taxi driver vies with his customers to be the saddest person on earth. Just as the error of the hooker’s drawing a blank with a badly recognized woman, the welcome of a dead loss might seem one of those bad days; but our guide of things mysterious proves to be a versatile and agile discoverer of what she needs to press forward the big picture. Knowing from the top there’ll be no sparkle in this outing, the driver runs past the veil of tears that structure of equiprimordial connection and aloneness. “You’re weak, very weak,” is her bid to snap her into some semblance of adult responsiveness. (She bemusingly adopts Amin’s phrases, “Give it a rest, so we can eat in peace” [giving us to understand that the passenger is not a one-off but a long-term piece of work].) The protagonist in a tight spot realizes she has misplayed this engagement and strikes a far more primordial, disinterested note. “We women are unhappy. We don’t love ourselves… You can’t sum it up in just one person. Life is so vast. Why depend on just one person?” “Why not?” the weak one blubbers—Jarmusch’s “jerking off” very much in play, with its hopeless cases and vast wastelands. Even here there is a moment of dark mirth: “Why not [the dead weight argues] be different?” [as if hopeless losers are few and far between]. The talent scout’s parting declaration, “You can’t live without losing. We come into the world for that” [dodging black holes like her], is entirely addressed to herself and her being on the spot to deal mercilessly with the poisonous while being warmly on the trail for hearts with some gold.

   Another friend turns up, by day, this time—in hurdles 6 and 2—and our protagonist, unlike her keeping her distance from the theology of the old lady, dresses to seem ready to coincide with the pious passenger from her own generation. Perhaps struck briefly again by the pathos of that elder’s personal best, she opens the conversation with, “You come to the mausoleum, too?” After rather self-consciously tossing back-and-forth the vagaries of religious garb, the ascetic (in vast contrast to the divorcer of Amin with her chic upbeat and intrinsic warmth), strained, though gentle friend, of quite recent vintage, asserts that her pattern is once or twice a week. “I’m used to it…” Holding to irony as if a vitamin pill, the driver, only apparently onside, avers. “It hasn’t become a habit with me…” Then, being very devious by necessity, there is, “I never imagined I’d come to a mausoleum to pray.” The questioner discovers that though the promising friend (more promising than now) at first did not subscribe she does now, “to a certain extent… Actually, it soothes me.” At this, the driver gives her a wan smile and quips, “Anyhow, I haven’t found peace of mind, yet [neither, of course, in immortality, nor in a largesse in becoming extinct]. One day, maybe, who knows?” Showing very well that words can produce more assurance of being on the same page than they really mean, the religionist maintains, “I’ve been coming here for ages and I still haven’t had anything.” “Perhaps it’s a big wish… Too big…” is the secular learner’s way of getting on an open road where they can get down to business. This cut-off, however, immediately ends in a ditch. “It’s not a very big wish…” This is so because for the seeming or hope-to-be adventurer, all she was serious about was her on-again/ off-again marriage engagement. “I come here to pray to make it come true… I think he’s full of contradictions.” In one of those deft touches of street navigation landing in the face of a lousy navigator in a much wider sense, the driver shouts out, “How can I get by if you just stand there?” After a pause where the passengers of a wayward vehicle make rude gestures, she adds (to the jerks outside and the jerk inside), “And you think it’s funny? What an idiot!” Right about here, our guide has to be digging down to put natural motion into the “just stand there.” She takes up with her friend, notwithstanding, the “contradictions,” (and potential syntheses) of the case. The eligible one moots the factor of “fate” in all this. Taking another run at the stand-still, the driver takes liberties with the facts in claiming that she tells her son about fate, “come what may…” (yet she’s a paragon of radical resolve, too vigorous for her surround). “He says he doesn’t understand fate [a phenomenon with a purchase on freedom]. He just can’t accept it” [he truly doesn’t accept freedom per se]. “What’s his problem?” the dutiful domestic asks, no doubt providing a stiff shot of dark mirth. She improvises on that theme of absurdity. “He has no particular problem. Or maybe he does….” In this vein of tough roiling, she sketches out the bare bones of the count-down. “I divorced. One day he no longer wanted to live with me. And he left. He tells me I’m a bad mother. Mainly he couldn’t stand the atmosphere at home anymore” [the essences of “atmosphere” being a remarkable imbroglio for a film to tackle]. She covers this nightmare with the albatross of piety to see if richly-held disaster can disperse a bottleneck. “The first time I came to the mausoleum that feeling all but faded away. For now, all I do is pray.” Like her plodding sister, the new (and equally disappointing) half-wit, leaves her with what she considers to be deeply valuable reorientation. “I used to say, ‘You pray to force God to give you things.’” “That’s interesting,” the very alone convenor of talent offers. “Don’t mention it,” the problem solver replies as she leaves the car. There is a quick cut to the next bid. What would have been her response to this dullness? In the subsequent plunge down to stage 2, the patient sentimentalist must now trouble shoot the situation of having been unequivocally abandoned for another woman. “He said it wouldn’t work.” She has shaved her hair in a gesture of being done with the mad passion and creativity which she couldn’t embrace; but also, now looking more unusual, reaching for a strangeness which could be right for her, if she were not so constitutionally drab. “I told him, “You’ll regret it some day…” [sounding quite Helsinki]. “Am I hideous?” she asks. “No, it suits you,” the driver insists (regarding her nun-like presence), being both loving and cruel. “I think I’ll soon get over it,” the teary survivor declares; and with that the research and the friendship is pretty much toast. She puts out there, for old-times sake, “That’s hard, isn’t it?” / “Yes, it’s hard… The hardest part for me is admitting that it’s hard [that putting together an enriching life is not the way she had been induced to suppose]. I’m ashamed of saying that it’s hard [her dependencies now in painful doubt]. Because I thought everything I liked would happen…” “I understand,” the road warrior assures. She smiles warmly and reports, more to herself, “You lose at times, unfortunately…”

   With a world heavily laced with the likes of Amin and his inspirations, dead-ends (farcical, appalling and hostile), “losses,” are the name of the game. The latter stages (5 and 1) where she finalizes the raging malignancy is more a tip-off of small mercies in a big picture than a family’s big deal in a little picture. So, when she greets Amin en route to “grandmother’s” day-care, she savors the irony of her ever being “weak” like the clinging vine of stage #4. “I don’t get a kiss?”/ “I don’t want to…” (She had played the same hand pretending to want to keep him for the evening, being denied by the UN dad and then, after realizing he could put his porn-dish and whatever else into play, being caught up with and told, “You can have him.”) This allows her to toy with what was once trouble. “Are you pleased to be staying with me tonight?” The reflexive “No” would roll off like rain on a duck. He commands, “When you come to pick me up from grandma’s don’t forget the tape of Hercules…” More cheeky marauding on his part follows, and her body language is a picture of aplomb. He brags about his new course of computing in school (for the new Hercules) and she, claiming to know a short-cut, annoys him in face of some of the improv she excels in. In retaliation, he mentions the sacred father’s “Satellite’ and the “very sexy scenes” in fact far more a laughing matter than a crying matter. She stops at the counsellor’s office and comes back with the predictable all-clear that the boy will be better off in the land of Hercules. She recites, “He’s a man. He has to grow up with a man” [a dutifully religious maniac as dictated by the regime]. “Man,” to Amin, being kicking ass, he rolls out a self-serving spiel of: pushing her to show fifth-gear macho; then he moots that the woman his father might eventually marry will be “better than you… She won’t be out all the time…” [“I get the message,” she pleasantly toys]; and brings up an old grievance, that she, the servant, was late for a pick-up. She pretends to be flustered and defensive. “I needed water for the battery” [the right fluidity]. His rant about, “She’ll do the dishes, cook good meals” [her response, “It’s good that life can be summed up [computed] in the stomach”], carries the phraseology of the dogmatist dad about to be history— “The problem is taking on responsibility at home.” She would love to be able to say, “I have more important things to do. A maid can do the housework;” and she does say that. Her “short cut,” instinctive ways getting on his nerves again, culminates with answering his tantrum and recriminations with a simple, “I was busy…” He snarls on reaching the drop-off, “Get lost! You’re lying!” And she calmly replies, “I’m a selfish person…” The very brief 1-spot, the last of the communiques to the man in white, the last of the demands, comprises, “Take me to grandma’s” and her kiss-off, a poised, “Alright,” poised for lots more trouble and windfalls. But now freed of some baggage she didn’t need at all.    

[anangelicday-mrwolf]

Wolfsbane : Noblesse Fanfic (post-ending)

(previous chapter)

Chapter 37 – Yuigi’s Mystery

“Sir, we have a situation!”

Sangin and Yeonsu bolted into the room, their motion so forceful that they might as well have demolished the door.

“We just had an explosion in sector 32.”

“Sector 32? That must be...”

“That’s where we have a facility that belongs to the ex-chairman.”

Of all the places.

Taesik, the director of KSA, minced a biteful of his lips, grasping his desk tightly by its either sides.

“Do we know the cause?”

“We dispatched the agents who happened to be nearby. They testified that the topmost structure of the building – which is in the ex-chairman’s possession – was utterly destroyed. Luckily we have zero casualty so far, due to the time and location of the explosion. Not to mention it was built in an area not dense in transient or residential populations.”

“...That is good to hear.”

“I am terribly sorry to say this, but it is too soon to call off the alarm. We have yet to find the one to blame.”

“...Did you notify them?”

“Yes, sir. Mr. Takio said he’s on his way right now.”

“Very well. You two look into the exact number of casualty and magnitude of damage. We must get ready for the aftermaths, including the media broadcast.”

Sangin and Yeonsu nodded in understanding.

They remained silent, but they knew what used to stand at the scene of trouble. They also knew who was lodging there.

Which was why they mentally mumbled in synchronization: Did she finally do it?

*****

Yuigi was running.

She had been stranger to a chase for such a long time.

However, unlike her previous experiences, she was the one on the run.

“Where do you think you’re going? I just put up a fight and gave you an invitation – don’t you turn down the party!”

The man croaked behind her, sounding much more like a toad with his voice raised.

Currently, Yuigi was luring him.

She could not say for sure if she could muster even one-sixteenth of her original power, but she remembered how she could make a colossal building crumble to the very bottom with a mere punch, as if breaking a toothpick.

She knew herself too well; she could not dare engage in a brawl where the safehouse once maintained itself.

‘There’s no reason for me to reserve myself a lecture from those three, given that I can make it back alive.’

She ultimately reached the area where 6th, 7th, and 8th Elders were lost, still under KSA’s management – a thoroughly vacant space, impeccable for a clash-slash-clamor.

‘No, it won’t be a clash. Clash applies to a case in which the involved parties engage in a mutual combat. What I’ll soon get to encounter here would be a one-sided beating.’

Yuigi directed her eyes, slightly hazy with bitterness, towards her choker, somehow feeling heavier than usual.

“Like I said, you have no idea how elated I am, Yuigi! For at last I have found a chance!”

The modified human smirked, making it so very blatant that he was in ecstasy.

‘Duh, of course I have no idea. I was too busy trying to recover my well-bombarded eardrums.’

That was when Yuigi got curious of what he had said to her upon entrance.

She was aware of the fact that bad guys who talk a lot have so much to offer.

Though verbal manipulation is far from her usual style of battle, Yuigi warmed up her lips in preparation.

“Oh, so that’s what you jabbered about when you crashed through the door? Thanks for filling me in.”

That moment the man’s face was crumpled in displeasure.

“I happened to be busy in thoughts. Damn, speaking of which, I didn’t even get to enjoy my late-night snack. I’ve been waiting to savor it since last night; I wonder if I can get it later. Then again, since the entire building is gone, I should start cleaning the mess. And figure out who to send the bills to pay for the loss.”

Yuigi peeked at him, making herself appear as unconcerned as possible.

Just as she had wished, his face was plastered with doubt concerning his own hearing capability, soon to be marred with question regarding her words.

“That was the prelude of my glorious history of spotlight. You were supposed to be my witness for the moment...! And you didn’t hear anything I spoke?”

“Nope. To me, getting a treat as scheduled is more important than that stupid speech of yours.”

“Why, you...! Stick this to your head – the codename’s Kornel. The new hope and star of the surviving Union! And as I get my revenge for my dear friend Mark, I...”

Kornel flinched and held his tongue, in the course of his frenzied monologue of screech and spit.

And he smiled as if telling Yuigi that it was a nice try.

“You were planning to pry out info from me. Sorry, but I’m not falling for it. I’m not that hopeless.”

Well, you just spilled the codename of your closest comrade. That counts as a lethal mistake in my point of view.

Yuigi did not dispense her opinion, for Kornel did have a point: she could no longer collect intelligence from him.

And she had neither the plan nor time to give it another try. Kornel flexed his fingers and closed the distance between them.

“Since you were keeping yourself hidden in such a place, I assume your skills have turned unworthy of flaunting. It’s a shame that I can’t pummel you while you are in best condition and fully furnished, but I hope you’d understand. When will I ever get to beat a Cerberus? Oh, and allow me to thank you in advance – thank you for serving as my stepping stone to the higher ground!”

With a pregnant thud, Kornel flung himself forward.

Instinctively Yuigi’s senses were whetted to the extremity, and she fixed her eyes upon his fists and correspondingly maneuvered herself in the air.

Kornel launched the kickoff of their game with light punches, their pressure and power nevertheless not even close to the definition of kickoff, and darted towards the red-haired woman. As she ducked and turned in evasion, she could run a self-diagnosis.

‘Reflexes. Speed. Rate of reaction. They’re not so different from what they used to be. My powers may have been only partially retrieved since I was freed from Crombel’s lab, now chained by this choker. But this isn’t so bad; I can handle this, I think.’

And Yuigi got to pay for speaking too soon.

“So this is piece of cake for you, huh? You do live up to the name of the Cerberus.”

So here goes the real deal.

Yuigi had a feeling that was what Kornel’s grin was implying.

Swoosh!

Pow!

“Urgh!”

Kornel’s body faded as Yuigi kept her gaze on him, and right after an impact equivalent to that of a tank’s missile bored through her side.

Despite the painful delusion that half of her form was shattered into dust, Yuigi lifted her body to find out what just occurred to her.

Thus she came to behold Kornel lifting his enormous fist, about to powder her for good.

Bam!

Yuigi gave a kick to her legs at full force, to be gravely astonished by how Kornel had already caught up to her.

‘He looks like a toad, but how come he’s so fast?!’

As far as she was concerned, he was just a bit slower than Takio, based on her memories from the day he exhibited his nimbleness with a glass of water when she first opened her eyes in the safehouse.

Therefore, she had no choice but to altogether pledge herself to dodging.

She was not completely cornered, to her gratitude.

‘No energy manipulation or body transformation. Looks like he’s the type that deals with physical melee based on superhuman speed and strength.’

The moment her analysis met its end, out of habit she attempted to counterattack.

As she had commonly done so, Yuigi concentrated the energy within to eject it in the shape of a beam.

Just then, an unexpected pain yanked her neck, rendering her whole body numb.

It was thanks to the choker, molded by Tao and assigned by Takio.

Simultaneously, she could feel the energy that sparked across her palm withdrawing itself, like fire dumped with water.

Kornel did not hesitate to throw himself towards her, and after a series of despair and helplessness came a thought: Should I just give up?

Yuigi did not even wipe the blood off her throat, a mark left by the slash of wind that very nearly beheaded her. She was captured by the idea that even if she makes it out of here, she still has no life.

‘And I don’t want to stay as a nuisance to him.’

Takio may have thought she was blind to the fact, but she knew.

She knew that M-21, as much as he tried to make it invisible, was not happy at all with her presence.

Although Lunark’s visit set a guideline for her future behaviors, she knew that Takio was on a rather away-from-good terms with his teammates for her sake.

And just then she could see no reason why she should keep on with her current status, void of a purpose but surely a hindrance to her savior.

‘Let’s just give up.’

Her body stopped struggling, as if it were waiting for her statement.

She could feel all of her cells drained of vitality, as if her biological clock has been broken.

Meanwhile, Kornel did not halt his attack; he was right onto her face, which was a sign for Yuigi that this was it.

However, the air enveloping her heaved with a swoosh, and Kornel’s movement went past her.

No, she went past it.

‘What the...?’

She was ready to die. She did not mean to move whatsoever.

Nonetheless, her body scrambled as Kornel lunged towards her once again.

And her body began to move on its own.

‘What the heck...? What is going on?!’

She could not control any of her appendages.

It was as if her mind was cut off from her flesh, trapped in a shell in humanoid configuration.

On the other hand, her steps and actions had turned much more precise.

Apparently Kornel realized the change; his face was muddled with confusion.

But not long after, he snickered, seemingly onto something in his mind.

“A puppet within the Union, and a puppet outside, I see.”

What are you talking about?

Yuigi’s words were mute, her voice box incompliant.

“In the past, I could pick up a couple things about you by pure chance. Including what Yuri did to your body via Crombell’s order, when you were made his test subject. And what you had gone through when you found yourself at the Union for very first time.”

Yuigi did not like the way he was bickering.

For some reason, she felt like he knew something that could devastate her entire world once she learns.

What are you trying to say?

What is it that you know?

Tell me. Say it now.

No, don’t. Don’t say it.

Please let me stay ignorant.

A myriad of thoughts summoned within her soundless lightning, vortex, and squall.

“Did you know that you’ve been serving your archenemy?”

Kornel’s declaration turned Yuigi’s inner lightning into thunderstorm.

“How very pitiful. You haven’t realized who gave you your misfortune.”

Her vortex within transformed into a tornado.

“You’ve considered Union your everything, haven’t you? Well, guess what? It’s the Union that took everything from you.”

Her squall recast itself as a hurricane.

And the said hurricane struck her from head to toe, igniting every nerve of her physique.

What is that...

“...Supposed to mean?!!”

The phrase that was to be left as a thought erupted through her lips.

She could feel control back in her grip; Kornel stiffened upon her shift.

He soon repositioned himself to continue his assault, but he had to hold onto the idea.

“Miss Raciela!!”

Bang! Bang!

With a sheer cry, bullets unusually amplified in power directly landed on where Kornel was locating himself.

Kornel hurriedly took steps back, as Takio secured himself before him.

The Union agent winced upon recognizing him.

A purple-haired gunner. A gray-haired werewolf shifter. And an electric whipper with locks of white hair. In whatever circumstances, don’t you ever face off against them. Or so help me......

‘Damn it,’ muttered Kornel in his head, as he composed himself and gritted his teeth.

“Looks like fortune favors you. But don’t you think this is the end of it. Now that I know you are here, you have just provided us with an additional weapon. You’d better mark my words!”

Contrary to his you-can’t-do-anything-about-us stance, Kornel did not waste a second in running for his life.

Takio kept his gun poised and ready to fire until Kornel was made perfectly scarce, to finally turn to Yuigi, who remained immobile until then.

Her reply to his question of her safety was nothing like what he was anticipating.

“Tao.”

“...Sorry?”

“The guy who used to be in DA-5 with you. The one who is still on your team. I need to talk to him.”

(next chapter)

Yes, Kornel belonged to the assassin team under Crombell’s ownership, along with Mark. The fact that he was Mark’s closest friend is my creation for this fic, so I hope there would be no confusion on this matter!

Now this fic is slowly reaching its highlight chapters. I’ll do my best to bring a good finale for my series! :D