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xarrixii · 3 days ago

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F/B Chapter_58 : "Walking on Ceilings"

CW: fighting, blood/gore, guns, gunshots, general injury arc three closer 3.8k words

previous chapter | beginning | masterlist

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Nacht raised a hand and idly whisked the index finger to the side before he’d even fully pointed near the fire, a shelf full of empty pallets flying out and cracking against more wood. The metal rack followed, shoved across the aisle and banging into the rack on the other side. A full load of unused pallets slid out of the tilt and collapsed onto the floor.

Five toppled out with the pallets, a faint trail of white breath following, and Nacht pushed the force below his brother up enough to stop his head from breaking open unceremoniously on the concrete in a pool of red.

“Raijin,” Nacht echoed with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, “I am warning you only once. Leave.”

Wind brushed through with the electric clutter his son appeared next to him in around a second later. The crazed smile on his face disappeared as soon as he saw the lack of expression on Nacht’s. There were a few messy landings on Raijin’s face—redder spots, the beginning of some bruises, something strange riding up and fading on the neck. Raijin huffed. “I was handling it.”

“Not very well,” Nacht clicked, tactfully using his free hand to grab Raijin’s chin and lift his head up, slightly leaning and pulling his second hand out of his pocket to touch the skin. It was stiff, leathery. He’d look at it more later. “You should be able to leave with the medevac down the road. You’re done for the day.”

Then he pat Raijin on the shoulder. Raijin’s face narrowed.

“Me and Blake can handle Five. You can go somewhere else.”

Nacht sighed and glanced over his shoulder, grabbing onto a space behind him and slamming his hand to the side, force matching and plummeting a span of red fire into a low shelf of pallets hard enough for them to clatter out of alignment. The fire howled off the wood and slithered off to the pallets on the floor. Nacht looked back to Five pulling himself out from behind the wood. The fire circled around Five once before being dismantled by a wave of Five’s hand.

Nacht snapped a zone to hold Raijin’s foot down, electricity cracking off where Raijin tried to move. Raijin’s mouth opened before Nacht cut him off. “I do not need the irrational decision-making that got you here in the first place”—Nacht resumed normal gravity to Raijin’s foot—“Adiel should still be within range if you prefer going back her way.”

Raijin’s glare met Nacht’s before his son finally cursed and sped off behind Nacht out of the warehouse.

He pulled on the area around Raijin’s friend—Blake—and shot him past out the doors. A grunt escaped what Nacht imagined was a messy tumble into the snow-dampened soil. Blake ran forward back into the warehouse surrounded by electrokinetic clutter when Nacht grabbed him and again threw him back, this time to joined with a Blake, let’s go.

Nacht felt the breeze roll in around his feet as he finally began to walk further in toward Five. “I have a simple way out of this for you,” he started with a general level of nonchalance before making a fist with one hand and twisting it around, flipping his sense of direction and landing on the ceiling, what would be him looking down at Five more of looking up.

Five’s cane and head stayed pointed and motionless at the roiling, yet still explosion just behind where Nacht had previously stood.

“Or,” Nacht chuckled out with disapproval, “the Cinder way with all its animosity. I suppose I should have figured that the case and just skipped right to it—this is you, after all.”

Five put the tip of his walking stick back onto the rubble around him, explosion whirling back to Five as he blew it out in a breath with his mouth. Wisps of white air trailed off like he’d blown out a candle, and even then it seemed to favor floating into the man’s light blue cat sweater.

“I don’t know what you see in him,” Five said.

“You don’t see anything,” Nacht couldn’t help but grin a little to only himself. It was always good to know that his little brother remained the same. “Of course you wouldn’t know.”

Even from a distance, Nacht could see Five’s mouth form into a smile as he used one hand to take off his already broken cheap sunglasses and toss them aside to clatter somewhere else. “I suppose I don’t.” He then treaded slowly over the shattered wooden pallets, poking and sliding some aside with his walking stick. He lifted his free hand upward toward Nacht and spread it out curiously. “But his inadequacy is thermally apparent.”

Five paused again and dropped his hand, flexing it a few times in front of him as wind rolled through.

“It’s interesting, you know that? Fighting a man that does not gauge what he is fighting before he starts his battles.” Five’s hand went to his side. “I can feel it in the slights—the way the heat moves from his electrokinesis, the way it forces out like he is not prepared for the speed of his own propulsion. I figure it’s something to do with you, though I can’t quite place it.”

“Where is Morgen?”

Five stopped for a moment before his head craned up as though to stare directly into Nacht where he still stood on the underside of the warehouse roof. Almost disappointedly, “You came here for more than your son.”

“You don’t know.” Nacht frowned. Morgen was the one who got obsessed with the inner workings of people, how they moved. He’d simply been reminded to ask.

Five hummed unceremoniously and fire snapped to life at Nacht’s feet, forcing him to switch directions before it grew and exploded. Nacht landed horizontally and steadied himself on the side of the rafter, clicking two fingers together and smashing the fire down where it clouded around Five in temporary stasis before it lost momentum and absorbed into the man who stood there, utterly still.

Nacht watched his breath enter the air. Five finally dropped his head.

“If I knew which part of nowhere Morgen was, Nacht,” Five said with a new, bridled anger, “he would not still be in the aether.”

Five’s cane flicked, sword-like, and he cut it across, an arc of fire swerving and exploding into separated furls Nacht jumped off from to land onto boxes covered in plastic, five spindles of flame following and exploding again into Nacht’s face. Nacht pointed down, falling horizontal with two pallets behind him, and softened. That meant Morgen was still detached from everyone’s inaction—meant that Nacht could still convince him.

Finding him would be a different story. If Morgen could find a trail, his own was long since erased.

“I have a deal, Five,” Nacht offered again.

One hand yanked a pallet that had fallen back up. Nacht shoved with his other, pressing himself down gravitationally vertical on top of the flat, now-stabilized floating surface in the middle of an aisle.

Nacht eyed the twenty-five tiny lances of flame crawling their way toward him and rotated back gravitationally horizontal, slamming the pallet below him hard enough to shatter into the shelf he’d already flown through the cracks of, snapping himself back up to the rafters as it creaked and toppled over, dust flying up.

The twenty-five pieces swung back to Five, another explosion popping under Nacht’s feet as he ducked and hit the floor at a crouch, flicking Five up to the ceiling with particles of dust in a rectangle around him where he hooked his cane into a rafter and swung himself to his feet, reaching his hand and grabbing on before Nacht could let go.

Nacht could see Five’s hand sink into the metal beginning to glow red. Five cracked the cane to the side and another explosion popped where Nacht would have been had he not thrown himself forward and stopped, hand halted in action, at glowing sparks held still throughout the building.

“I will not be making deals with you,” Five said calmly.

Nacht narrowed his eyes and looked at the mess on the ground. “Nothing I want is worth all this.”

Five scoffed, the scattered array of flaming dots expanding outward in unison. Nacht’s arm cut upward and the nearby fallen boxes repositioned in a crude shield, bursting alight with flame as he tossed them through the ceiling close enough to Five to make his cane flinch and pull back. A gaping hole to the sky cracked open through the metal, a metal beam smashing into one of Nacht’s spaces and forced aside as he pulled the debris in the sky back down diagonally, colliding audibly with a shelf as it groaned and fell.

He turned briefly to stare at the wall of heat that barreled immediately outward, snapping himself up to almost float above the warehouse, laughing at the sudden warmth of the outside compared to the inside and feeling the explosion ripple past with its slam of bass.

Five must have absorbed the heat inside the warehouse—used it both as a source of PKE and better thermal contrast. Nacht hummed and smiled to that.

The flame did not leave. Nacht’s feet hit the sheet roof rather softly before he yanked his arm up and winced, roof, rafter, Five, and a cane that was let go and dropped to clatter and roll away popping out from the warehouse and escaping into the sky. Nacht let go and used the hand instead to block the sun through the white clouds, other hand grabbing onto the air.

Nacht caught the roof and the rafter, tossing it aside with a curt wave, and huffed. His smile disappeared and he grabbed the sheet below himself and pulled it up, pressing down with his other hand while it still blocked the glare of the sun.

The platform wobbled, slightly, while he carried it around in haste scanning the sky.

He was shoved rudely backward out of the reformed gravitational space in a blink of light, platform smacking down below while Nacht tumbled haphazardly into a violently seized hold to soften the landing. Five skidded out beside him, blowing fire off his sweater, head not bothering to turn when Nacht picked himself up.

“Faulkner is the one who always told you to do that,” Five said before snapping a blast out of his fingers that Nacht redirected aerially upward. It slowed and connected back with Five.

“Father”—Nacht threw himself to the side to dodge another snap of Five’s fingers—“always liked finding the fastest way to what he wanted.”

Five scoffed again.

Nacht narrowed his eyes down to slits and felt the wind harshly snap his coat in front of him, collar unfolding. Five closed his eyes and took a deep breath of the air.

Nacht snapped and the sheet of metal on the roof flew at Five. An explosion tore Five away the direction of Nacht cracking off more of the rafters and jutting them up. Five hissed, tearing his arm where it got half-caught on the metal, already well in the air. Nacht rotated the metal beam and clunked it back toward Five, who hopped aside with small pyrokinetic blasts at his feet, and again as Nacht tangled and whipped it through the air.

Blood dripped and splatted onto the roof. Nacht tore another piece off for himself and flew up away from a wild wave of fire Five sent sprawling across that moved and swarmed his body.

Five rolled back onto the roof and stood up through the heavy thunk of the rafter crashing into the metal sheets. He took the back of his hand and ran it along the underside of his nose, sniffling and wiping the wet crimson off onto the knitted cats. The arm that had previously been holding his cane, his left, was slightly crooked from the shoulder and limped whichever way motion brought it, rocking back and forth as Five unsteadily kept himself bipedal. Nacht frowned and stopped in the air, watching as his brother slowly got his bearings again. Red bled through the slightly-torn blue sweater at the shoulder’s joint.

Plop. Plop. Five shook off the only arm he could.

“Let’s make a deal, brother,” Nacht said calmly, lowering himself down and taking a few deep breaths.

Force from behind knocked Nacht forward out of his telekinetic zones, and again as he tried to form another. And again, and again, and again, Nacht shooting himself away just for another blast to pop up and shove him out of the space he created. Nacht threw himself through trees into the snow, crunching down hard and easing out a singular breath.

Nacht flexed out one hand with a grunt.

“Now we’re even!” Five shouted cheerily from the warehouse roof just before appearing back with his walking stick, stabbing into the snow as Nacht rolled to the side. Nacht grabbed onto the cane and yanked as Five swept it, whipping it against a tree hard enough to shatter and taking all of the pieces in one zone to hurl at Five and miss.

Nacht let out a coarse laugh and ripped the entire section of ground around them both into the air, trees let go and smashing back down while Nacht tossed himself and five broken plastic pieces back through the holes in the warehouse roof.

Wind snapped through. He felt a breeze run through his back—particularly wet. A blow of red came out from the ceiling and Nacht flattened his hand and pushed it down, other just slightly up, and watched Five practically attach to the ground before continuing only down. Rooted. He watched long enough to make sure it wasn’t an asphyxiating box.

This time, Nacht noticed the speed of the cold getting colder.

“It’s been fun, Five,” Nacht said evenly, closing his eyes for only a moment, “but you’re running out of PKE. And I need to start finding⸺”

“P.K.E.?” Five queried.

Nacht smiled and pivoted, searching for the facility’s entrance among the rubble and shelves. He waved half-heartedly in gesture with the hand holding Five’s movement down. “Potential kinetic energy. One of Father’s theories—I read through his documents and research instead of destroying it like I you’d all assumed.” His smile faded when he glanced back at Five, frowning, eyes shut. The reaction made him surprisingly angry, hands entering the pockets of his coat instead. “A lot of it was completely unrelated—Jackstalk knew that better than anyone.”

Five hesitated. “You haven’t recreated the testing, have you?”

“God, no,” Nacht reeled, whipping back around to stare at Five with abject horror. “I—why would I ever decide to put anyone through that?”

“Is any of it destroyed?”

“What a terrifying scientific loss that would be.” Nacht looked away again. The blood pooling beneath Five’s shoulder was nauseating. “I can live with being the sacrifice now that there’s nothing to be changed. Forgetting makes it pointless.”

Wind passed through.

“I’m glad we were able to talk today. As I was saying, I need to start finding the other half of the reason I came here today.” Nacht began to walk away, casually, hands yet still in his pockets to the entrance of Five’s actual facility. He remembered to move a finger and take the broken shards of cane along with him, stepping over rubble and loose ash.

The fire of anything still lit in flame shot toward him, and Nacht dropped his two spaces, stick clattering in pieces and Five immediately climbing to his feet. An entire shelf filled with wrapped boxes and crates slid and hissed along the floor to block the fire before it hit Nacht.

He tossed the shelf aside. It echoed out each domino that followed.

“You are mistaken”—Five bounced up through an explosion and grabbed onto a shelf that began to glow red at its metal, boxes setting to fire, standing and hanging barely on the edge—“if you seriously thought I would let you do so.”

“I should’ve remembered,” Nacht barely said through gritted teeth, “that natural, subconscious control over any heat within radius would make you an A-class by default. For that I apologize for thinking so less of you. This is the last time I will offer my deal, Five. What I want is not worth tearing this building apart.”

“I have to lose it anyway.”

Nacht growled, almost ripping his hands from his pockets and snapping as soon as Five began to move at him from another explosion.

He condensed the size of the control to a point, roughly the size of the hole he imagined was under the blood earlier, just barely inside the range of the abdomen, and shot Five into the ceiling as it ripped off above the man, a small speck of red jutting out ahead before Five had even left the inside of the warehouse.

“And now you’re even with your nibling!” Nacht yelled out.

Five fell back down, lately jumping out of explosions before diving to the concrete generally roughly. He arranged his right hand over the hole in his side that Nacht only registered as off-target and sloppy, too far in.

How dare you, Nacht thought absently.

How dare you choose to leave anyone behind so thoughtlessly?

He barely raised both hands before the crack of the roof breaking into two between two gravitational spaces resonated downward.

How dare you?

The two chunks of roof bent down, in, and landed on the tops of the shelves. Dust floated down as Nacht cracked each into two again. His back was wet, his shirt clung to the skin as he kept breaking the pieces and slamming them down around the box. Shelves toppled over with mere shoves and the silence broken with a cacophony of explosive booms split off in other directions by shattered collections of roof.

Wind splitting past. Coughing through the dust and smoke. A piece blasted off over top of Five to somewhere else. Five wiped stray blood from his nose again. Any fire he tried to throw at Nacht had blinked out before it got close.

“I’ll keep my visit short. Get your wounds attended to,” Nacht spat as kindly as he could manage right before his left hand was promptly filled by a silent bullet.

His head craned around. The second bullet was crushed in mid-air by a crumpled fist in the right hand. Wind poured out in onslaught, clearing out the dust at the same time of Nacht grasping onto the nearest piece of debris and throwing it close enough to the person standing with their pistol raised to make them jump and curse in Yugenztch.

Nacht kept himself righted as smaller pieces of everything began to slide in the wind. He only stepped slowly forward.

One finger extended out from the each hand, two pieces of debris lifting. Two fingers on the each hand, four. Nacht swore to himself as pain immediately flashed through both hands. Three, six. Four, eight shards of debris lifted up into the air and pointed, aimed. He stopped another bullet with the ninth and kept walking with the tenth, pain flooding through his hands.

Blood dripped down the left, dribbling down each finger before falling off to the ground and splatting down. Nacht threw the debris at anything coming at him, picked up more, and hurled at the shooter as they continued to fire and force the wind through.

A waterfall of wet iron passed into Nacht’s lips as he grabbed a bullet instead of crushing it and shot it back, connecting into the man’s flesh at the right arm with a tight wince.

Fire burned up in a wall, Five trying to shout through the wind and going unheard. It dissipated away not long after.

He grabbed onto another bullet and fired it off at their frantic reload. Used the back of his right hand to wipe away the blood under his nose and flick it off. Nacht took the next nine bullets and flipped them around.

Five flew in front and the bullets halted in motion.

“Nacht!” Five yelled, fire spiraling around to float about him, right hand at his side and left hanging freely. Nine bullets sat pointed, steady, in front of his head where Nacht had stopped them.

The wind died out. Nacht could hear the shooter heaving and dropped all nine bullets, tapping at the blood still leaving his nose to stare blankly at it.

He looked back at Five. They were possibly eight feet apart. The blind man stood directly in front of the shooter, who didn’t lower their gun. Nacht wiped blood off his lips and frowned as it immediately returned.

“Kyal,” Five continued much calmer, “stand down.”

As soon as who Nacht could only assume to be Kyal lowered the gun, Nacht slammed him up against the nearest thing behind them. A groan escaped as they dropped the gun to clatter on the broken and dirtied floor. Heavy grunting as they tried to move.

Nacht’s hands shook and rattled vehemently, screaming for it to stop. He took one deep breath for his anger, freezing cold air hitting the back of his throat. Blood still dripped from his left hand, plopping to the ground.

“What do you want, Nacht?” Five said exasperatedly. He took his right hand and clicked his shoulder back into place, hissing and gently nursing it before letting his hand return. Nacht’s eyes narrowed at the sight, but he forced himself to look through the taste of iron.

He sniffled. Waved his hand off and clenched it in and out, dropping Kyal to the ground. They hacked and clawed at their throat.

Kyal. Nacht only vaguely remembered the name. A bodyguard, maybe.

Nacht laughed to himself. He could’ve started with exercising his PKE range if that’s all Five needed to be convinced. “I have a deal. It’s in your favor.”

“State it. I’m listening.”

“Give me your records on LS PYDA-5 Code ‘Urban’ unclassified and I will spare the rest of this facility and pledge not to act on Cinder for the next six months,” Nacht said casually while staring down at his left hand. The blood was weird—and it’d been a while since anything had burst out into any kind of real pain. It was unfamiliar, a remnant of old documents. “Even in retaliation.”

If Five could see what Nacht looked like, he would’ve known Nacht’s kinetic was close to cutting. Nacht would’ve been forced to leave.

I got too angry, Nacht lamented to himself. It was a simple interruption.

Five laughed. Actually, genuinely laughed. Nacht’s mouth quirked into a smile as he wiped more blood away from his nose and pinched it between two fingers. “Fine. I’ll hold you to it.”

“Five,” Kyal cut in with a tone that meant warning.

“You’ll go find one of the first-aid kits,” Five dismissed. “It’s one record. If he’d like it so bad, then I’ll just give it to him.”

May, withdraw operations immediately and start a damages report, Nacht called, beginning to follow Five as he beckoned and walked to the entrance. I will meet your team on the road.

Copy, May thought back.

next chapter | masterlist

/ / / / / | --- missing a content warning? let me know

Holy fuck that chapter arc took way longer than I thought it would. My hiatus time will be spent planning out the next arc of flash/burn and putting a few chapters in stockpile.

Man these people need breaks.

Before arc four comes out there will be redrafts of arc one chapters just because I read them and cry a little inside. They read very short to me which I don't want them to do, necessarily. Am I excited to rewrite Harlow fighting two people in chapter four? Debatable. But I'll really enjoy rewriting all that dialogue with more ✨flavor✨.

That's where I'll be for a while. I'm gonna find someone to shrug this frappe I don't like onto and do something entirely random. Maybe rave. Only a little. Only a little.

Shout-out to chapter 57 it's a banger. My writing's felt grittier recently and it's. it's. hellyeahhhhman

Shout-out to @goodluckclove for reading both drafts of this chapter. And sticking with me in DMs as I struggled a little. I might try to explain this all better to you if you want possibly.

I'm open to being told things. And also asked things. Indefinitely.

taglist (ask to go on or off): @madeoforgansandtissues, @fins0up, @kadjakat

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xarrixii · 19 days ago

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F/B Chapter_57 : "The Pretender"

CW: fighting, disorientation, detainment, blood/gore, guns, gunshots I hope the wait was worth it. 5.8k words

previous chapter | beginning | masterlist

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“Decoy operation successful. A-dash-2 injury sustained. Monitoring.”

Alph breathed out a plume of white air through their black facemask. It was one of the first things Storm had handed them on the helicopter a few miles back, and fair enough. Northern Kampfdan was still extremely cold in late February. Inches of snow crunched beneath Alph’s bulky snow boots as they kept glancing cursorily at the dirt road they were following parallel.

They would get turned away immediately if they were caught on the road. Apparently it was monitored for activity.

Pokémon Go! was giving them a surprising number of Pokémon to catch out here. Alph was several miles from the natural dockline they’d departed from and maybe another half of a mile on top of that from the nearest city. They pushed away a notification about their data usage and stopped in the crack of a wildlife camera Storm had found the first time they scouted the place out.

They caught the Pokémon in range before moving on, stepping again in the thick layer of snow covering the ground despite all the damned trees.

“What the fuck was that?” the radio operator, nicknamed Fall, suddenly piped at the same time as a vehicle chugging along by, making Alph flinch and take a deep breath. They had to take a moment to look at the road before continuing to move.

“Some kind of explosion from out of a nearby building. Big chunk of debris, maybe, flew over to the penthouse.” That was one of the people on the decoy team. Alph as all for kidnapping corrupted wealthy fucks and had planned originally to join that team, but they’d been denied because there was a pool on the roof. The kind of logic that made sense but also sort of unravelled when you considered all of this snow.

Besides, Nacht had convinced them, you have a few skills that make the main side significantly easier to pull off.

So here they were, trekking tiredly through snow.

“Motherfucker!” the communicator from the decoy team said onto the main line after a while. “We might need to extract early. Some pyrokinetic just showed up⸺”

“Douse them,” Fall said.

The communicator Alph forgot the name of made some estranged noise of exasperation. “You think we didn’t just try that? There’s a big wall of fire here now and⸺” someone must have cut them off on their end. Some overheard chatter about a pool.

That piqued Alph’s interest enough to pretend to make a phone call on speaker with the phone in their hand and earbud connected to the radio feed.

“You put water on the fire and it didn’t back away?” Alph asked first. They had to take a bit to remember where they’d had that conversation with Liam. It had been after their exam, while they were holding Urban up. “You’re sure you’re dealing with a pyrokinetic and not just amateur arson?”

“Water would still make some of it go away if it was just arson,” he said back.

Hey. So. Urban, Liam had said in their head.

Alph had replied back with a simple What about him. Thinking about that rat-asshole still made their head hurt. Sometimes when he came to mind Alph wondered if he’d staged the kidnappers at the park to get on their good side. That just made them angry.

Yesterday night, it was raining. Has he always been able to summon? In the rain?

What the hell are you talking about? Alph had asked.

Even just manipulate?

Incredulously, You know how pyrokinesis works, right?

Liam had dropped it with a curt Nevermind.

Then life had gotten busy. They never got the chance to ask Urban about it. Urban probably would’ve told them something about it anyway. Manipulating fire and having it stay alive in the rain—that was major. More than manipulating it without seeing it. It was a defiance of a known mechanism.

Here it came up again, in the decoy mission where the only actual goal was to incapacitate one of Cinder’s primary operators as a distraction and a threat.

A threat that Storm could. And that Cinder deserved it.

Urban, Alph mouthed without really thinking about it. No one answered. There was mostly the background chatter and gunshots that came with radio silence and focusing on not getting hurt. Then, “SCATTER!”

A slam to the ground made Alph flinch at the same time Fall started talking. “What the fuck was that? Hello? Damien?” Fall paused. “Damien?”

Quietly, in the background, “Uh, this is Captain Michaels, prepare to copy⸺”

“Disconnect the decoy team from the radio,” Alph said. “Now.”

“Multiple suspects electrically sedated. Apprehending and leaving on elevator shortly. There’s a lot of fire, requesting Packard if possible. Downed suspects have some of those”—Michaels’ voice got a lot louder suddenly after a grunt—“earpiece radios. Volume was on high, probably for the gunshots. Something about this being a decoy. We may need to search the area and call for traffic stops. Over.”

“I’ve detached their line,” Fall said once the officer was done speaking. “I’ll have to move tracer sites after this. Al, you’re clear to keep on. I’m going to go unavailable, dispatch out a few people to recover our guys if we can.”

Cinder wouldn’t do that, Alph thought first. Then they thought of Urban, who was likely at the penthouse decoy. Please don’t let them leave you alone.

Electric sedation was the agreed term between departments for knocking someone unconscious with electrokinesis, meaning Captain Michaels was likely an electrokinetic, on a rooftop with⸺

“And, Al,” Fall started a little hesitantly.

“Yeah?”

“Remember to disconnect when you see the fence.”

Alph looked up from the phone in their hand. There was laughing off near the road—which meant an audio camera might be in range. Then the property’s fence line came into view, with a good distance before anything to be seen on the property after that. Chain link, barbed wire. “Alright, I see the fence. Gonna hang up so I can win that hundred dollars. Meet you at the airport later.”

Fall was clicking something in the background, but said nothing.

“This is literally the most meltable fence I’ve ever seen. They’ve only got people stationed along the road, I don’t know what you were seeing when you came up here but it sure as shit wasn’t advanced security.” Alph paused again. “No, dude, literally what are they going to do, put me on the road and tell me to walk back? I’ll still have gotten inside, gotten a Pokémon, and stolen your hundred. I’ll meet you at the airport.”

They pressed the hang up button on the radio line disguised as their phone contacts and pulled up one of their band rock playlists on shuffle immediately to “Burn It All!”

Alph made a dramatic effort of sloppily summoning an unsteady fire and manually huffing it out with their other hand along the fence line, as they had the first few times their mother had been teaching them. Pretended to get bored and hop on social media while waiting for the fence to melt. Another song passed entirely through by the time Alph had a big enough hole to step through without touching the fence and risking the fate of the PRIVATE PROPERTY: ELECTRIC FENCE sign that presumably repeated its text in Kampf.

They continued walking, phone-engrossed, in the ridiculously large and tree-thick windy property space until they heard more talking and stopped to look up from their scrolling of the radio transcript they couldn’t hear. Ducked behind a crate and opened their texts. Fall sent a message through.

hundred more if you can fidn whatever their hiding

Deal, Alph sent back and opened Pokémon Go!, catching a Pokémon they’d long been staring at on the map and clicking off the screen.

“Everlong” began playing while Alph was entering the warehouse and they began to quietly hum it aloud while passing through boxes and the wind chill that had rolled in for the past several minutes. They had to take the phone out of their pocket for the flashlight after finding a stairwell with a lowered lift they weren’t going to bother with.

Water was still melting off their soles by the time Alph got to the bottom of the stairwell and reached for the up button on the lift.

Someone shouted at them over the loud beep of the button getting pressed and Alph swiveled around to a gun barrel staring them down from a doorway fit for a bomb shelter.

“What?”

The person said it again. Alph looked at their sleeve, green in color.

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” Alph’s brain was going overtime thinking about marbles. Urban had said some old military guys around town had told him when he was trying to run around and earn any money he could get his hands on. Green marbles—lime. Those old marble race videos always had lime, and Alph always sunk into fake despair when they lost.

Cheap, untrained mental barrier. Marbles. Anything really.

“Uh, I don’t,” Alph sputtered, trying to communicate while thinking about something else entirely. Cinder green was telepathy. “I’m a—tourist. I, I don’t speak, uh, is it Kempflaggen⸺?”

“Shut up!” the telepath barked instead. Alph sheepishly laughed. “Get on your knees, damn it! Hands over your head! Slowly!”

Alph obliged semi-reluctantly, thinking about lime green marbles as much as they possibly could. Purple marbles? Urban had always changed his bet every time, fell into a nap, and awoke to find out the color he picked had gotten second or third place at the end.

They felt their hands get wrenched behind them as soon as they were on the ground, a set of gloved hands holding on tight and properly fitting a pair of binders over Alph’s as fast as they could. Alph felt their stomach instinctively drop with the weight of their arms drooping and someone yanking them back to their feet by the shoulders.

“You are trespassing inside of a private military base,” the telepath began before Alph could let out a purposefully dumb comment, shouting while half-rifling through the mess of empty thoughts Alph was filling their head with. “We are now entitled to enforce Kampfdan law as a registered private sector organized militant group. I am citing our ability to put you under lawful Kampfdan arrest by way of trespassing on our grounds. Refusal of compliance gives us the full rights to exercise up to lethal force as long as you are held on our property.”

“Where’s your passport?” the person holding Alph asked, hard and accented.

Alph ignored them. “You can’t kill me, I’m not a citizen. I’m traveling.”

“You’re in a secluded blacksite. You can disappear by the time anyone comes looking. Make good choices. Where is your passport?”

Alph bit down. “I didn’t bring it. My friend has it at our hotel. We were leaving this afternoon.”

The telepath’s eyes narrowed, rifle still pointed dead-center at Alph. If they really wanted to, they could probably try to hook the guy behind them and make sure they couldn’t be shot without risking the guy behind them being in the crossfire⸺

A pistol locked itself against the side of Alph’s head. One hand still on each shoulder.

Still heavily accented, “Identify yourself.”

“Ident—like, my name?”

The gun pressed in farther. Alph felt a faint breeze from the stairwell and a loud beep like when they’d pressed the up on the lift.

“Raiden,” Alph answered lamely.

“Like the video game boss?” the telepath scoffed. “Come on, kid,”

“Yeah, spelled like the original Transgressor comics, R-A-I⸺”

The pistol smacked against the side of Alph’s head hard enough to send them sprawling onto the floor and choking on a gasp on the way down. Throbbing flooded their head with a drawn out groan and the earbud cracked out of their ear onto the concrete.

A foot planted itself into their back as soon as their ears began ringing. Thoughts failed them.

“Don’t kill him yet,” one of them said, muffled by every other process Alph was trying to register. “We could get in trouble if his friend knows where he’s supposed to be and comes looking. Besides, he looks like the general.”

In, out. Give yourself a second.

“Telekinetic force hurts like a bitch, don’t it?” Alph heard the accent through the padding, could feel the person lean against them. “Be kind to yourself, now.”

Alph was forced up again and patted down for anything they were carrying. Pocket knife, phone—that they proceeded to make them unlock—wallet, and, much to both Cinder officers’ dismay, a passport.

“Lying little,” the telekinetic managed before saying something in a different language. “Ryder Leman, PY-C. Barely out of high school and you’re getting into trouble on another continent. Bet your mom would be real interested to get a phone call about where you’ve been.”

“She’s heard a lot,” Alph chuckled under their breath. “This would be far from the worst she’s gotten called about.”

They didn’t even need to make that up. Alph was the kid known for acting up until they hit eighth grade, when they figured out they could regularly hang out with Urban. Alph didn’t like to admit often that they spent a lot of their younger years specifically causing trouble against people they didn’t like so that their mother would come over. Otherwise she probably wouldn’t have been around at all.

The amount of times Alph had won my parent could beat up your parent on principle still made them smile just a little.

The telepath hummed. “We’re placing you in solitary until someone can come and pick you up. Your bail is reasonable to Kampfdan laws broken plus the cost of replacing the fence you’ve destroyed. Do not resist further.”

Alph could feel the telepath rummaging through their brain for more by the time they could sustainably think about random garbage again. When the two started dragging them through a maze of extremely ventilated hallways, they stayed completely quiet apart from subtle movements. It was always weird to know you were in the presence of telepathy but completely excluded. Denied access to an entire conversation.

Eventually, upon entering a cell commons devoid of actual prisoners, the telepath spoke up again. “Why are you here?”

“To win a bet,” Alph mumbled. “Friend said he’d give me a hundred bucks if I could get in and catch a Pokémon, then offered another hundred if I could get inside and snap a picture of something or, something. We figured you were just some local stuck-up rich people front. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“What friend?”

“Ayf.” It was easy enough to just use the text logs Alph already had rather than fake a bunch of different ones for a while. If they really wanted to dig, they could find something incriminating, probably, but otherwise it was just memes and whatever else, plus the donated contact from Afyer just for the plan. “Saved as Afyer.”

The telekinetic shoved Alph a bit more forward across the empty cell commons. “That’s Afyer Octave?”

It was a habit Alph got early from their dad. They saved everyone in their contacts list as their full name and wouldn’t even change it until they had the person’s number memorized. Fingerprint unlock. It was in case Alph turned up somewhere and needed to be identified before getting their driver’s license. And also if they ever had to call anyone without their phone.

Or, more conveniently, situations like this where you wouldn’t want to explain where firework guy comes from. “Oc-tay-ve, yeah.”

The TK mumbled something under their breath and they all continued walking until finally the hallways broke into a lot smaller of a cell commons and the two Cinder agents shoved Alph inside one of the standard wall-locked cells. Metal encased in concrete was standard for most places that had to house kinetic prisoners.

“Alright,” the telepath, now holding all of Alph’s things, sighed when the telekinetic made their exit. “We’re taking and keeping your stuff until you’re picked up. And I’ve just received authorization from border control to perform an internal interrogation, probably so they can save money on interrogation bonus wages before your flight home. I’m starting with your phone contacts⸺”

“This is insane,” Alph complained as soon as they felt the telepathic probing come on harder. They’d have a massive headache later.

My apologies. On procedure, I am Theodore Nguyen, TE-C. Teddy does fine. That other officer just now was Issac Goodwin, TK-B. Except for appropriate law enforcement, the contents of this conversation are expected to be maintained in privacy. Is that clear?

There is no way this is legal, Alph said back.

I will now begin with your phone contacts. I expect honest answers to help prove your identity. Alph couldn’t gather if—he—said anything after because of the nausea-inducing slam that happened at the same time. Then he came back in, Who is Afyer Octave?

Like someone was kneading their brain. My friend. The one I made the bet with.

Alph waited for the reaction. Frankly most of the reaction they waited for was a bullet through their skull and an alarm going off. Nothing. Teddy scrolled down on the phone, slightly. A few names went by, like Alph’s dad and mom contacts renamed. It seemed the telepath Nacht nominated, Adiel if they remembered correctly, had managed to connect.

Harlow Collins.

Their thought processes flatlined, receiving a raised eyebrow from Teddy.

That name should’ve been way earlier in their contacts.

You almost seem mature, reading through these messages. All this talk about the weather.

We need to abort, Alph finished thinking by the time the binders on their hands and the wall had crumbled away from internal damage. Teddy went wide-eyed rather than weird-little-victory-smirk at the end and had delivered Alph a shot barely through the side of the abdomen by the time Alph tackled him and jammed their fist into his skull.

“Fuck,” Alph hissed out with their breath. They immediately put a hand over the hole and dug one-handed through Teddy’s pockets. Pocketed a pistol hidden in there on the way. It’d be easier on everyone else if Alph could figure out that weird knocking-people-out thing Urban could do.

Nothing. Alph got off the man and looked around the room. Also nothing.

Prepare something for me. I think I’d bleed out before walking all the way back.

Adiel gave them a curt mental laugh. You’re lucky I found you when you were walking, Alph. The only thing Cinder hasn’t smeared anti-kinetic is the open air and internal walls. I had to break a vent sheet open. I’d give us maybe three minutes before they figure out Theodore is unconscious. Her Yugenztch accent was still blatantly apparent when she spoke mentally. I’ll guide you to Raijin.

Alph snapped the fingers of their available hand together before remembering trying to cauterize themself wouldn’t work and they’d never burn any tissue.

If they don’t have anything to close the wound, make your own. Nacht is on his way; however, I can’t guarantee that will be on time. You need to get moving.

What’s taking him so damn long? Alph asked.

Adiel made a noise in Alph’s head akin to some level of muted frustration. The decoy complications. He was debating going and handling it himself, apparently something about a personal grudge to settle against that J.E. Rowan fellow.

You don’t need a personal grudge to hate that guy. Alph gathered their things and decided on just using pressure. They didn’t have time to make anything to dress the gunshot. Thankfully, Adiel kept her guiding instructions very clear even though she wasn’t specializing in telepathic communications like Liam did.

By the time Alph got through the several layers of alternating materials and a hydrokinetic operative on their phone with their feet kicked up on their desk to Raijin’s cell, they were feeling the general sensation associated with collapsing and screaming out for their dad.

“Listen,” Alph started slowly, breathing, before getting stopped.

“What, Cinder’s finally sending you in? Did you want to spar?” Raijin was lying on a cot in the corner, hands set in a generally thicker set of binders, snickering. “Tell you what, I’d kick your ass again.”

“You remember.”

Raijin snorted. Alph put a little more pressure on their gunshot.

“That stunt you pulled,” Raijin seethed, “someone isn’t going to make it out of this mess alive. Still unsure who between you and that other guy.”

Alph looked again at Raijin’s binders. On one hand, he could help in getting both of them out. On the other, he seemed to justify your murder with being nearby.

“We don’t have time for this,” Alph barely managed to say before they had to whirl to the door opening behind them and snap off several blooms of fire at an incoming assailant. It bought Alph enough time to get out the pistol they’d nabbed out of Teddy’s hidden holster and fire off a few rounds into the operative’s feet.

Alph glanced back to Raijin grinning wide. A breeze swept through the enclosed room.

Fuck. How long had that silent alarm been tripped for? Alph couldn’t even remember the last time there wasn’t some kind of faint wind outside despite all the trees in the way. Just how long had an aerokinetic been feeling for?

If that’s the case, you’re going to have trouble getting out of there. I’ll be here to help, but even with Raijin you might have to just hold it out until Nacht shows up. It’s you and him against the facility.

Alph made a disconcerted groan under their breath and concentrated on burning a fire inside of Raijin’s binders long enough for them to break like Alph had done with their own and the wall. “Come on. I said we don’t have time for this. Let’s go before we have to deal with more of that.”

“I can handle a few goons, whatever your name is.” Raijin flexed his hands, cringed a little, and cracked his knuckles before shaking them off and stretching.

“It’s Alph.”

“Yeah yeah—one question, before I go, that blonde guy that was fighting off me and that Liam asshole trying to get them to stop at the same time, that was my target, wasn’t it? He was, Urban?”

Alph scoffed. Then cringed at the responsive pain. “Of course Liam was trying to get him to stop fighting.”

Raijin gave Alph a curt salute before disappearing in a mess of static that made Alph gag and lean against the wall with their free hand.

Did he just leave? Alph lashed at Adiel.

Hesitation. He’s Nacht’s spoiled brat, but he’s one of the most effective people we have. Don’t worry. He can handle himself and it’ll probably distract most everyone off you. A short pause. I’ll come in to help.

Don’t, Alph seethed and put their back to the wall. God that bullet was starting to hurt. Stick to the plan. I can wait it out. How much longer until Nacht shows up?

Adiel was tuned out by the loud crash and massive spawn of fire that sucked itself back down the hallway after appearing out of nowhere.

“Raijin!”

Alph had definitely heard that voice before. From where?

“He’s gone. Evacuate this entire goddamn compound, now. Establish priority targets and hit the alarm.”

“Yes, General.”

A few seconds pass of silence where Alph presses down hard on the hole in their abdomen. Maybe a centimeter off and they would be pretty much dead to rights or completely unscathed. They were dizzy, could feel themself shaking as they leaned against the wall and swallowed.

“You can come out now, Raiden,” the one addressed as General demanded.

What the hell? Alph bit down. Who the fuck is that?

After a moment, Adiel came back in, That is Five.

Like, my uncle Five? That Five? The one that Afyer kept saying absorbs fire? Alph did not like that. They’d met Five once before. He’d insisted on watching Alph spar even though he made it very clear that he was completely blind. Then proceeded to make comments the entire way through. Alph still remembered him sitting in the chair on the side, one leg over the other with his guide dog at his feet.

Alph had asked Liam about it after and he’d said something along the lines of It’s like sound. You can hear that it’s there, but not necessarily see it. He senses the location of heat and uses it as a form of eyes.

So it’s a gut feeling? Alph had countered.

People who assume that in a fight usually end up dead.

“Make sure they’re not dead. Amaterasu⸺” The rest ended up scrambled in an instantaneous fit of nausea that caused Alph to actually wretch onto the floor and heave in an awkward crumpled position before someone came up and gently pulled them up by the arm.

Alph’s brain suddenly wouldn’t let them do anything. An entire conversation tuned out as they stared forward in a helpless lack of motion.

Someone’s in your head, Adiel said, Yugenztch accent especially thick. Give me a second. I have to sever the connection.

Alph clicked back into their bodily autonomy maybe a minute later, feeling pressure over their wound from something that wasn’t their hand sopped in a thick layer of crimson.

They were up and throwing their bloodied fist into the person closest to them at the same time said person was hitting back. Alph cringed at the pain in their side and the slam of their head getting knocked back and threw up a leg until they heard the short release of air that told them it had connected.

“They’re struggling!” what Alph could identify as a hydrokinetic from their blue sleeve shouted. “We’re gonna have to knock them out!”

Alph slammed down across the side of the hydrokinetic’s head at the same time they shoved Alph off and ended up missing. Alph groaned out from getting thrown onto their side and tried to snap up a fire to use.

The HY flicked open their flask and doused the flame before Alph could use it. Alph shot up from the floor as fast as they reasonably could and threw themself forward into the HY. They couldn’t get enough force into their hits to do anything useful and eventually the HY got a water-laced palm over Alph’s mouth and nose for a good thirty seconds. Alph kneed them off again and had to take several deep breaths with a hand near their throat.

Fire exploded out of their hand and made the HY yelp away their next attack, giving Alph an opening to hammer one into their head.

“Fu-uck!” the HY cried out with a whimper. “Jesus!”

Alph was pulled off and punched in the face before they could land another. Alph responded by punching the newcomer right back with a fist full of fire, sniffling up the wet mess spilling out from their nose.

They wiped the back of their hand over the area and swore silently when it returned covered in bright red.

Are you sure you don’t need me to come down there?

I’ll be fine, Alph groaned, then hissed at their side again, twisting around to jab the hydrokinetic that had gotten up. Alph elbowed the other person that had joined in, then made a strangled noise as they grabbed Alph’s hand and a pulse ran through their spine.

Yellow sleeve. EK. Alph covered their hand in fire and yanked free, starting to put feet to pavement instead of continuing the fight.

Maybe if Raijin had stayed, Alph snapped off to no one in particular, sighing and moaning out curse words at the growing pain spreading through their side.

They’d gained a significant amount of distance and even navigated back to the stairwell through the unlocked hallways of people packing whatever they could to get out of the place as fast as possible when it turned into individual little stabs all over the location of the wound and had to halt at the bottom of the stairs to ringing ears.

Keep moving, Adiel urged.

Alph mumbled their dissent but kept climbing. The lift rolled past full of boxes and other generally carryable items Alph couldn’t discern.

Static charge pricked Alph’s upper arm and started practically dragging them up the stairs faster than they’d been going.

“Come on. I thought you could handle yourself decently without me. You’re gonna get yourself killed and then I’ll get an earful.” Raijin took a moment to sling Alph over himself before practically hopping up the steps.

“You came back,” Alph heaved out.

“I was taking care of some Cinder guys and freeing everyone else sitting around here. That telepath Dad is always picking to run his missions told me to get my ass over here.” Raijin scoffed. “Also, I frankly don’t know which direction from the trees is something useful and she won’t tell me.”

Alph was just thankful for the speed.

When they got to the top, Raijin dumped Alph onto somebody else Alph recognized from somewhere and shook himself off before pushing something on top of the stairwell doors. Then the wave of fire rolled through that Alph had to clench their fist to barrier the two other people from.

“My condolences,” Five’s voice came through along with a breeze. “I didn’t realize I had to start a war today.”

Another wave of fire.

“Get him out,” Raijin said, disinterested. “I’ve got this old blind man.”

“Even I’m not dumb enough to tell you that you can fight Five, Raij,” the guy shot back. “Hey! Raijin⸺! Do you want to die?!”

Alph let out a brisk laugh and settled themself on their own feet. Then noticed the binders still around the guy’s hands. Also with a line of rubber. Alph snapped up a fire and put their hand on the cold metal to the guy’s clear dismay.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting these off. So you can help.”

“The heated metal would burn my skin.”

Alph made a face. “That’s why I’m concentrating the heat on the inside in an off and on pattern, and not letting it escape past a certain threshold. So it’ll crack off.”

“Who the hell taught you that?”

“Urban.” Alph kept it blunt. That was a memory Alph did look back on fondly.

“The D-class?”

It was that sentence that prompted Alph to look the guy in the face. They removed their hand from the binders immediately and threw a punch forward by instinct. This was a Cinder operative. Why they had the binders on, Alph couldn’t say, but this was definitely that asshole electrokinetic Urban fought every week or whatever.

“What the hell⸺”

But if he was here, what state would Urban be in?

Isn’t he at the decoy right now?

Yes. You’re at the warehouse with Raijin? Alph kept forgetting Adiel was monitoring their head.

Raijin is trying to fight Five, Alph told Adiel as a large crack whipped through and exploded in little sparks with a set of maniacal laughter. Raijin freed a Cinder operative and put me next to them. I’m dealing with it.

Freed?

“Are you insane?” the guy whined, clearly unprepared. “I’m Storm! I’ve always been Storm! Ow, shit.”

Alph threw up a shield from the next round of explosions that rippled through. “What?”

“How do you think we found out about that D-class pyro in the first place? A prophecy from God?” He huffed, disgruntled, and looked at the binders still on his hands. There was a red print from where Alph had put their bloodied hand on the metal.

Alph wiped the back of their hand across their nose again. Wet, red.

They squeezed their eyes shut and breathed. A stack of crates crashed and Alph opened their eyes to watch it fall and kick up a mess of dust. This was their mother’s fault. If she’d never gotten Urban involved, Alph would’ve eventually joined Storm and it would’ve been so easy.

Their head hurt.

“Raijin is about to get himself killed, alright?” the guy began hesitantly. “We need to get him and ourselves out of here before that happens or this’ll be a real big red mess when Nacht shows up.”

Alph finished breaking off the guy’s binders and tiredly looked forward. They just wanted to fall over, continue to sweat, and die. Jesus fuck it hurt.

There will be painkillers. I am coming over now.

Another crash. Yelping through pained laughter.

The guy bounced off, leaving Alph alone again to stumble awkwardly around away from the stairwell to lean against somewhere else. Another crash sounded along with plummeting crates and boxes and shouting.

Alph turned their head around the corner to see and yanked on Five’s fire. It tried to draw back like a magnet while they kept pulling from different directions. Blake, Raijin, whichever one of the two electrokinetics Alph was stuck with were taking advantage of the openings but not hard or fast enough to actually get through before Five overtook Alph in control.

Five darted around out of sight. Damn it.

Alph got up and started walking somewhere they would be able to see again when Adiel dropped down and forced Alph up onto her shoulders to walk out of the warehouse instead.

“Nacht and his backup crew are within my range. He says he wants you at the gate when he arrives. Where are your injuries?”

Alph knew not to try and fight her by now. “Hole, just barely not a graze. I think it missed most everything important.” Some weird strangled combination of noises escaped Alph’s throat after that. “Probably something to do with my nose. General bruises. I don’t know what Cinder did with the gunshot.”

Adiel hummed and she continued to walk Alph through the silent snowed-in yard. They didn’t make it to the gate by the time two black vans rolled in and jerked to a stop.

Nacht hopped out of the first one already barking out orders. Alph grinned and nodded at him, who saw the motion and nodded back, continued his direction, and cleared his throat while approaching. “Alph. A medic is prepared for you in the back van. Thank you, and I will see you later.”

“Kick Five’s ass for me,” Alph said while Adiel helped them walk by.

Nacht gave Alph a firm pat on the shoulder. “Adiel, I expect you to go on and make sure they’re home safe.”

“Yes, sir,” Adiel replied quietly as he continued walking and shouting at people. She didn’t put Alph down until that was on the stretcher in the van. She was immediately talking with the medic that hadn’t gotten off. Alph’s condition, Nacht’s orders, and then something else before it went black.

next chapter | masterlist

/ / / / / | --- missing a content warning? let me know

the "next chapter" was, in fact, significantly longer of some kind

bet you expected my daily ambiguous quote post, didn't you? :) someone remind me to add the "next chapter" link to chapter 56

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