Shouting to the Darkness

Choking and gasping, it looked like the end for him. He was already certain of it. While he was no doctor, he was quite certain that his heart had been pierced or destroyed. The human body couldn’t survive without something so important. It was just stating the obvious.

Yet, he didn’t feel like he was on death’s door as he should be. In fact, the cough he had only worked to clear out things, not because it was struggling. Something was clearly wrong.

Yori forced his eyes open once his consciousness had finally returned to him. He blinked a little, still not convinced of reality. It was impossible. Then the pain from his body threw itself upon him with overwhelming intensity. Rebelling against his sudden movements, it did everything to make him regret the naïve and cliché response. “It hurts…”

“But you’re still alive,” someone familiar replied.

Pain overrode his ears, not making it clear who it was that spoke to him. His mind immediately put what had logically happened together.

Sigh.

“Hayashi…”

“Eh? You see him?”

Apparently, he needed to get his ears checked as he realized. The confusion in the voice made him put more effort into his senses. Yori turned his eyes in the direction of the voice to find someone a little unlikely next to him. “You…”

“Yup! How ya feeling man? I’d help you up, but well…reasons…”

While his body still hated him with a painful burning passion, he forced himself up. His legs were clearly not ready for him, but he could at least sit up. There remained a lot of questions swirling in his head. “Seiji Tsuji, what are you doing here?”

Seiji actually looked worse off than Yori felt, though Yori still couldn’t see all of the damage on his own body. The heavy amounts of fresh blood covered his body along with countless talismans protecting him, he looked like he should be in the hospital for months of recovery. Despite the appearance, he sounded more alive than Yori felt. “I’m here because you needed help. That’s what friends do!”

‘Friends? I thought we were on different sides… He’s so simple, but I guess that isn’t a bad thing…’ As Yori tried to get more of the picture on his own body, he looked at the blood that soaked into his clothes. The hole where the woman pierced his heart stood as a reminder of his battle. “How am I alive, if Hayashi’s not here?”

“Nerine’s with me. I got her to heal you up, it was a rush job due to the situation. All she could manage was repairing your heart. Said you’d probably be dead if you had a normal body.”

“I see…makes sense…” It still left him with questions. However, moving from his injuries to Seiji’s he realized that there was something wrong with the picture of Seiji supposed normality. “What happened to your arms?”

“Oh this?” He acted very nonchalant about the thing as though missing limbs was something common. Motioning with his shoulder and stump, he called attention to his left arm. “That I lost in my fight with one of Yumi’s friends.” Waving with his talisman covered right arm, Seiji explained its loss next. “This I lost while fighting Yumi.”

“Fighting Yumi?” Suddenly, he realized that he missed a lot more details. He also now felt the ground shaking. It almost felt like an earthquake, though it was too gentle for something like that. Yori searched around feeling as if he was missing something very obvious.

Which was accurate.

Ahead of him, across two city blocks of destruction, he saw explosions of power and light. With each blast, the ground vibrated. It took him a little bit for his eyes to focus, but he could see enough to pick out the details. “Yumi!” He immediately started to cough and gasp as his body refused to accept his movements.

Unable to use anything useful to stop him, Seiji leaned blocking his path a little. “Hey man, you need rest. You got thrashed pretty badly.”

“But my sister!”

“Nerine’s fighting her, though from what I can tell it looks more like Nerine’s stalling. I don’t understand it, but whoever’s in control of Yumi right now is far more powerful than Yumi’s ever been before. I don’t think there’s any one of us who could actually stop her.” Seiji glanced over quickly at his arm that he lost to Yumi.

“She shouldn’t be fighting! I need to get to my sister!”

“We need to leave this up to Nerine. She’s the only one in shape to fight her right now. We just have to hold out until Yuki can put a stop to Takako, then Yumi will be free.”

Chapter 351 – Shouting to the Darkness

Yuki cleared away the remaining debris to free himself up. “I’m sorry,” he apologized to the house before slowly rising into the air. “I’ll need to come back after this is all settled to help fix the neighborhood.” As he rose over ruins of the house and trees, he got a better view of the neighborhood. “Looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me.”

He began to move towards the school still seeing battles happening. Though with all of the destruction, less happened than he could judge. “I guess, while I’ve been out, a lot of the fighting has already been settled. Since there still remains some fighting, that must be because Takako hasn’t been stopped. That’s good, I can’t allow anyone but me to fight her. This isn’t their problem.”

Quickly moving to the school, he stared down at the destruction. There was plenty of wide scale damage, but the lines and paths carved out along with the craters told him a story of the battles. He understood better everything that happened. “I’ll stop all of this pointless fighting.”

One of the fights came into his sights as he flew out. The force coming off the fight disrupted the air knocking him around and off course. A small thud dully echoed in the area as he fell into the ruins leftover from their fighting.

His mist protected him from any damage other than being shook around in the head. It took Yuki a few moments to get his focus back and stand on his feet. Concentration re-gathered the dispersing mist. “It was all just a blur. Who’s fighting?”

Shaking his head, he put his attention back towards the school. “I have to get back. Whoever is fighting won’t have to once I stop Takako.” He began to fly into the air again, having to focus more with the turbulence caused.

However, as he got into the air, he could hear the sounds of their voices. They were much closer than before. And that was when his contradictory decision surfaced. It wasn’t something that he could ignore. Given that everyone fighting was someone that he knew, it was going to be pretty hypocritical that he couldn’t ignore any of the fights.

He justified it to himself as he flew towards them. Something bad was about to happen if he didn’t step in to stop it. Gathering up spare materials from the ground of the ruins, he fashioned himself the only sort of weapon that he could in the time he had. He had no time to change his powers for something more useful.

Using his mist to crush the materials densely into a mass, he launched it straight for his target.

Saki.

Before she could snap his neck a massive force slammed into her head throwing her free of Tatsuya. Tatsuya coughed and collapsed to the ground grabbing at his broken arm attempting to nurse it. He rolled his head over a little trying to who had jumped into the fight. His eyes widened in surprise. “Why…?”

Saki stood up shaking off the ringing pain as half of her face was soaked in blood now. She glared over at Tatsuya and then up to the figure that interrupted her. Her eyes widened as well in shock. “Why are you here?!”

Already landing on part of the ruined house nearby, Yuki’s mist disappeared for a moment and then reappeared nearly as quickly. “You shouldn’t be so shocked. Your kick hurt a lot, but I still had my defense up when it happened. I’m not dumb enough to walk around the school without being ready to be attacked. I don’t have the reflexes of you to be reactive.”

He glanced over at Tatsuya, who had seen better days. “So you did come.” However, he didn’t get much time to react as Saki immediately charged him looking to put Yuki down for good.

Tatsuya tried to move for her, but his body had enough. He staggered to one knee as all of the fighting with Saki suddenly dropped itself on him. “Not now! Yuki!”

Nothing of what happened Yuki could even see. It wasn’t even a blur. All he felt was the pressure left by what happened in the frames of time between which Saki flew at him. However, she was nowhere near him anymore. A minor holographic read out ran out some text nearby his eyes informing him of the results. “I see, so that’s what happened.”

He looked up into the sky not able to see anything, but seemed to be looking for something. “She’s got protection from my powers too. If she does like Kaede and Katsumi, I’m going to guess everyone in Takako’s army does. There’s some questions to be answered about that.”

Yuki floated down next to Tatsuya to check on him. He saw more read outs nearby giving him reports on his condition. “Sorry, I don’t have the time to heal you up, but there’s nothing life threatening.”

“What did you do? All I saw was something hit Saki and sent her into the air, but she moved too quickly.”

“Yeah, she does.” An explosion of earth and debris shot up from behind Yuki. He turned around with expectations, knowing that things weren’t completely settled. It took nearly a minute, but the figure walked out of the column of smoke. Saki resurfaced looking even more bloodied from the last attack Yuki made. “Before I started this assault on the school, I knew that I had the chance to be confronted by the three of them. So I crafted powers to deal with each of them. Unfortunately, they had better planning than me.”

The mist around Yuki grew in thickness completely masking out his appearance just as Saki came charging back in after him with single-minded purpose. However, she never made it through the mist. It slowly began to disperse, showing Saki standing still no longer moving forward.

Yuki walked towards his friend. “What do you think you’re doing, Yuki?!” shouted Tatsuya trying to reach out with his good arm after him. “She’s dangerous, she’ll kill you!”

However, Yuki continued forward and Saki made no movement. He stood only centimeters away from Saki completely undaunted by her killing instinct. “I’m sorry, but I need you to hang on while I stop your friend. Everything will be alright soon.” Then Saki suddenly dropped to one knee with her hands slamming into the ground cracking the earth a little.

Turning away, he gathered up his mist to begin flying away. Tatsuya looked over at him wanting answers. “I took care of Saki. I’m giving you the last bit of my trust in you Tatsuya to do the right thing.”

“But Yuki!”

“She can’t hurt anyone anymore. I’ve placed highly dense weights on her body. She’s barely got the strength in her to just stand up. While Saki is fast, she lacks the same superhuman strength. So this will hold her while I deal with Takako.”

Yuki departed the battleground with Tatsuya still staring a little confused about it all and shouting for him. He couldn’t stay any longer than he had already. ‘I’ve got to get to Takako quickly. If Tatsuya’s here, then Hiroshi is as well. And knowing things, he’s already trying to kill Takako. I can’t allow that to happen!’ In the distance, he could see the school and his destination arriving.

Even in the darkness with only the moon to light the area, Yuki could see how badly the school had been damaged. Most of the south wing had been destroyed. He remembered Saki kicking him through that part. However, since he had been gone it looked even worse than he feared.

Landing upon the roof once more, it felt like the school quivered in pain. “This is even worse than when Demosthenes split the school in half with an earthquake. This won’t be a simple fix like before. It’s going to be better just to build an entirely new school at this point.” He slowly walked towards the hole that Seiji created for them. “It’s surprising that it’s held together still. It feels like it’s going to collapse at any moment.”

He jumped down the hole finding that the floor was now missing. Needing his mist to hover between the first and second floors, he finally made it to parts of the second floor that still stood. Moving quickly, he hoped that he didn’t need to fight anyone else other than just Takako. ‘I hope I’m there in time…’

Arriving at the end of the hall, he found Takako's lair. However, what he didn’t expect to see inside left him staggering a step back.

Crumbled up in the corner of the classroom opposite of Takako was Hiroshi. His whole body was completely bloodied and mangled horribly. He could even see bones poking through skin. It made Yuki turn away, having trouble with the sight only to see Takako grinning. She looked pleased to him. “You’ve finally arrived, King.”