Captured #5

Captured #5

From the top of the treeline, the assassin licked his wounds, patching the gaping gashes with herb mixes scavenged from the surrounding area with layers of fish skin to seal them on– obviously the poisonous kind, for they regenerated him instead of harmed him. Akiro calmly waited for the sun to slowly move across the sky, silently thinking as he took in the view from the topmost tree.

“An island facility accessible only by boat, in the middle of gods-know-where.” Akiro thought, recalling the time they were inside the meeting room of the Scavia Kingdom, reviewing the maps presented included topography, borders and highways. “According to King Stephen, those maps were state of the art, and plausibly, I could assume that every shape was as accurate as possible. Therefore this island isn’t on any of them.”

“So basically, this world’s version of Alcatraz.” Alcatraz, The Rock, or simply Alcatraz Island, is a small island located 1.25 miles from San Francisco California. It functions as a lighthouse, a military base and military prison. “This place was originally a prison, a prison long repurposed as a laboratory– and as I hate to admit it, it’s a formidable one.”

“But It’s nothing under a siege, but by the ruckus we caused at the front door, there are hardly any present. This will be the last mistake they make.” The assassin closed his eyes for the first time in over three months, finding peace and security atop the tree branch. He pictured the laughing faces of his friends. “All I have to do now is wait– Just wait, I promise to right the wrongs they did to you.”

“How dare you!--” King Vonn raged, his complexion turning red before turning pale at the sight of his wife.

King Stephen And Queen Kaguya gasped fearfully at the assassin. The templar Knights gathered around him have already surrounded him, weapons ranging from flails, spears, or swords, but he did look fazed at all. If they scoured his countenance, it was confidence– unbridled, indomitable rage.

King Stephen turned his head to his compatriot, finding him on his knees, his deceased wife in his arms, her head still held up by the ice. Tears fell from the mighty ruler’s face, not of water, but of blood born from intense grief. His hand shot up, pointing at the man responsible, and bellowed a ear-curdling command. “Y-You…Kill him!”

King Stephen and Queen Kaguya looked back at the soldiers slowly closing in on the boy, warrily but obediently with their weapons in front of them. “My real body is elsewhere, so this is pointless.” Akiro only shrugged, grinning devilishly at the men before turning back to the monarchs in the seats, “You have one chance. Confess your evil deeds to the world, and be spared by me– This is your final warning.”

Queen Kaguya looked at her husband, who did not flinch at the threat. For a moment, she weighed her options, the resolve she had pledged her entire life to cracking slightly. Even she had a conscience, but as she turned back to the Assassin, her eyes widened in horror, any forethought gone. “It’s a Trap!--” She tried to call out at the top of her lungs, a flash of pale blue light glowing from Akiro’s eyes and mouth.

The resulting explosion decimated the building and its surrounding forces, leaving only three survivors, the three most likely to escape such a blast alive– with a condition.

Back on the island, the destruction of his clone caused the information he had gathered to be transferred into his mind, a feature he unlocked by reaching such a high level.

Akiro opened his eyes from his deep meditation, finding himself to be in the lotus position still hidden away in the treetop, only with a bird nest on his head. He smirked as he reached for the item intertwined with his hair and sighed. “Is my hair really that much of a mess?” He chuckled, a faint stream of blood falling from his nose. “So even my normal skills have improved to such an extent. My decoys could only follow orders, but now I can split my consciousness. However, even one clone was enough to do this to me.”

The assassin looked up in the sky, his pale sun-deprived skin basking in the moon’s glow. Deprived of such a privilege, it was a treat to experience it for the first time in a while and at its fullest radiance, power began to subtly surge inside the former hero, his scabs falling off as his skin joined back together.

Splash!

A large blob of water cleansed the remains of the poisonous herbs and insect bandages, and Akiro breathed a sigh of relief, a hand combing his hair back. For someone who cuts his hair every month, the length was growing on him. Akiro looked at the blast doors of the bunker with a smirk, bursts magic power gathering in both his hands as he sank into the shadows of the great oak. “I hope you have a God to meet in the afterlife, because if you don’t– I’ll send you straight to hell myself, Keisha!”

Crash!

“What!?” The head scientist jumped from her seat. She stared at the numerous screens connected to transmission orbs, watching the entire scene of the meeting place. She had long dropped her cup of tea, her mouth agape at the scene in front of her, and her expression pale with worry. “H-He escaped his shackles!?”

She watched as the assassin controlled the moisture within the air to form spikes of ice almost instantaneously, faster than any mage she had seen, faster than even Micheal, the one in charge of overseeing the captured assassin.

“He’s at a level even Micheal couldn’t fight against– We need to call him!” Keisha reached for the control orb in the center of her room, a palm-sized object on her desk, and she channeled magic power into it, “Micheal! Do you hear me!? Micheal, TS-005 has escaped!”

“I need you to board onto the telepor—” The head scientist chewed on her thumbnail, her eyes returning to the screen to witness Akiro getting surrounded and imploding, the orb losing connection quickly thereafter.

Boooom—zzzzzzzzzz.

The scientist gulped, grabbing the closest object in her palms. “Shit, the Kingdom is in danger! God Dammit Michael! Where the hell are you!?”

The present guards behind her only exchanged ignorant shrugs. The head scientist threw the items in her hand, the papers flying randomly all over the place as she continued to make a mess of her office. She heaved haggardly, her well kept hair sticking out in odd places as she kept breathing with anger. Oddly enough, closely intertwined with her breaths were signs of nervousness– fear.

Keisha turned to them with a shaking voice, “Y-You two! You don’t leave this room! Do you understand!?” The two guards nodded obediently, drawing the swords strapped to their waists. “Good!”

The scientist turned to the monitors, calmed down by the two present inside the room. “Knowing TS-005’s recorded personality, He would most likely be on the run to recuperate. He would probably then retrieve his weapons in the Earlside Castle Vault.” Keisha deduced, “Revenge would probably be low on his to-do list, but not out of it. Until then, We need to expedite Project Puppet–”

“In the meantime, nothing will go through this door. We have enough supplies for half a year’s worth of rations.” She turned to the screen, the magical apparatus displaying the interior of the exit blast doors. Keisha was about to turn to the other monitors if the first didn’t flicker.

“What was that? Is it broken? Don’t tell me–” The scientist stared at the camera even longer, the camera flickering once more. Suddenly, the great doors that spanned the floor, the wide entrance and the ceiling, caved in.

Boom!

With the moon’s glow, a shadowy figure slowly walked through, both hands holding onto something. His clothes were tattered, but still covered in the dark. However its signature design and sustained damages only concluded one thing.

“He’s here! Why is he here!?” Keisha rushed over to the orb in the center of her desk, her voice echoing loudly throughout the compound. “Red Alert! I repeat, Red Alert! We have an Intruder!”

The orbs of light that protrude from the walls, spanned the hallways and decorated the ceilings turned red, and sirens began to make noise. Keisha turned to the monitors displaying the locations closest to the entrance, a small smile curling from her lips as guards began to slowly trickle in towards him.

At the same time, multiple exits were revealed from the mountain sides, with troops rushing out to trap the intruder from behind. “There’s nowhere to run!” Keisha cheered from her office, watching expectantly as security began to close in.

Her men were armed with short swords or maces, easily used in the hallways of that size for maneuverability. At the end of the entrance was a fork, and on both sides soldiers poured through. The head scientist's eyes beamed with excitement, her hands closing into fists as she gleefully watched the first man running at the intruder– Blam!

A faint blue light exploded from the tip of the tube in the assassin’s arms and the front most man was thrown back in his tracks, his center mass caved in and encrusted in an exploded crater of ice and frost. “Wha–”

The following men did not react to the thunder of the weapon and soon followed in quick succession– with each internal explosion, a small shell was ejected from the right side of the weapon. Blam!-Blam!-Blam!

Like the first man, their bodies carried the same wounds this time worse, but as they stopped in their tracks in shock, their bodies were launched back further and at the men that dutifully followed after him.

“T-These are some of the finest recruits!” Keisha roared angrily, watching as the squadron of soldiers began to run back to the fork of the hallway for cover. As they did, they were shot in the back, whittling their numbers from twelve to five, with one mortally wounded crippled. Blam!-Blam!-Blam!-Blam!

The intruder brought the gun to his hip, twisting his arm clockwise to reveal an entrance on the weapon and Akiro made a grasping motion with his left hand, his fist still open. Keisha squinted as two small blue cylinders materialized into his grasp and were loaded into the lower pipe.

She watched curiously as the motion was repeated four more times, before he shouldered the weapon again, pulling back on some sort of lever on the side. With one hand on the handle, its stock pressed firmly against his shoulder, and his left arm securely gripping the lower pipe, Akiro steadied his aim at the center of the hallway.

“I see!” Keisha felt the beads of sweat fall from her brows, “It must be a repeating-cannon of some sort. It requires him to distance himself from the target, however the target must not be beyond an effective range from its cone-shaped blast.”

The scientist scoffed disappointedly, both at herself and the men on the ground, disgruntled by the architecture. “He has the upper hand in this environment.” She looked at the spare monitors, more men slowly trickling in from further parts of the facility. “Our pincer formation is useless!”

The footsteps of the soldiers couldn’t have been more obnoxious, with the intruder quickly raising a barricade directly behind him with the flick of his left wrist. Thud!

The walls came up with a strong echo, a cube effectively sealing the only exit he knew, but the gunman did not bother. He lowered the weapon to his hips, leaning forward as he tensed his legs. “[Acceleration]”

Whoosh!

The gunman barreled down the hallway, jumping sharply to the right wall and running across its surface, before turning and leaping backwards to the left passage and onto its wall– his weapon now properly shoulder.

“What–” The soldiers collectively gasp, these words cut short by a hail of exploding ice-projectiles the size of peas. Blam!-Blam!-Blam!-Blam!

The five soldiers were reduced to one and scattered remains. The crippled soldier from the initial volley paled, shrieking painfully in shock, his body decorated by frozen chips of his former comrades. “M-Monster!”

“You’d be a waste of energy.” Akiro sighed, staring at the man down the notch of hispointing the muzzle away from the wailing adult. He instead opted to use the stock of the gun.

Crunch!

Keisha huffed, quickly calming herself with even heaving breaths. “This is nothing! As long as I have that! We will defeat him eventually! Yes! That is correct!” She told herself, glaring at the assassin, “I will kill you, Akiro Hiroto! I swear!”