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We reached the Mazarain border around ten PM, all remnants of twilight had faded awhile ago. The border was desolate desert…aside from the guard patrol. We knelt behind several sand dunes so they didn’t see us. They stood erect with large machine guns and flame throwers. There were also military tanks patrolling the border, but they had passed a half hour ago.
“I think they’re expecting visitors.” Cloud said quietly.
“The only problem with leaving civilization for a week is you never know who declared war on who, if that’s what’s going on.’
“Nah, this isn’t anything. If they were expecting war there’d be a lot more. Ragnarok definitely hasn’t declared war yet. Nor has Mazar, the number of guards and tanks doesn’t add up to the total there’d be if they were expecting to be attacked, or were attacking.”
I forgot…Cloud knows a helluva lot more about Mazar than I do, he was here before. I was only in Nohin a few times, and that was when I was little, I never even fought a Mazarain until I sided with Exodus.
“So, do you know some old military-trick or something that’ll get us past these guards? I’d rather not be shot full of holes, blow to bits, or flame broiled.”
“Yeah.” He replied, “They’re not very smart.”
“Or they weren’t five years ago.”
“Same king, same military. Here’s the plan, I’ll distract them and you take them out, you’re better with firearms than me.”
“Let me guess, haven’t picked up a gun since you were in Mazar, right?”
“Exactly, do you have that stun pistol thing that throws shots of light?”
“Yeah.” I replied, “What’s your plan?”
“I’m going to loop around their camp on my motorcycle, and fire a shot straight into the air. They’ll run to the source, so instead of twenty soldiers up there they’re only be ten. If you’re quick, you can take them all out with your pistol. If you don’t get them in one passing by, don’t worry about it and just keep going. Give me that one pistol of yours, and when you hear soldiers running and yelling up there, blast right threw their camp, okay? I’ll catch up.”
“That’s risky.” I said not very faithful. Trusting other people’s plans wasn’t my specialty, “Sure splitting up is a good idea?”
“Have a better one?”
I was silent and I sighed and handed him the pistol that I’d outfitted in my gun belt. He nodded with a slight smile saying,
“See you soon.” He stood up and started up his motorcycle, and sped away. I didn’t like the plan, but I sat down on my motorcycle and started it up to idle a little while. After a few second, I reached back into the compartment where I kept my backpack and Skyevi’s Sword, and pulled out the blade scabbard and all. I slid it into my belt on my right hip for good luck. I felt unnerved suddenly, like somebody was watching me.
A cold night breeze stirred and I chill went up my spine.
“Cloud…” I muttered, “Hurry up…”
I looked behind me and saw a person standing on a dune dressed in a white cloak that fluttered in the wind around the person. A hood covered his or her face completely. The cloak went around the person’s body completely, and the hem was burnt and singed. I blinked a second, mesmerized by the person, and I only heard the sound of the flare distantly in my mind, and when I blinked the person was gone.
“Shit!” I cursed when the signal clicked in my mind. I punched the gas and jolted forward like a bullet. I got balanced and I got a few seconds air time when I shot over the first sand dune. I started firing then. I zipped through the small camp, killing at least ten soldiers, male and female. I dodged tents back and forth, and anybody who was firing at me was unsuccessful since I was going so fast. I spotted the band of guards running toward Cloud’s position and started firing at them. They were so far away, I only hit a three or four and there were nearly twenty. I cursed, thinking:
I knew splitting up was a bad idea!
I lopped around, not following orders, and plowed toward the soldiers ready to make pizza. Another words, yup, I’m playing hero again.
I was hardly a foot away from them when I saw a young girl Ragnarokain girl standing in the middle of their group.
“Kairi?” I uttered shocked, I quickly jerked away, being fired at the entire time, and taking such a sharp right I was thrown from my motorcycle. I hit the ground with a hard thud, knocking the air out of me. Did I mention I had the hilt of my katana digging into my rips? Fun!
I sat up quickly, but since the scabbard of my sword was still under my ass, I drew Skyevi’s Sword with my left hand and held it up in defense. I blinked a second, and opened my eyes realizing they weren’t firing at me. I looked through what seemed like water surrounding me. I looked at it again, and it was like pulsing liquid glass, not water. The soldiers watched me, completely on guard but didn’t fire. Before I knew it, Cloud had rushed up behind them on foot and heads literally rolled. The little girl shrieked as Cloud finished off the guards. I stood up and jogged over saying,
“Thanks, we’d better get out of here though.”
Cloud swore saying,
“What the hell were you thinking? Didn’t I tell you just to keep going?”
I was about to brush him off but grabbed my wrist when I turned away to get my motorcycle demanding,
“Are you even listening to me?”
“You would have been outnumbered if they all rushed you at once.”
“It doesn’t mean I couldn’t of handled them! You’re not the only one who can fight, did it ever accrue to you that I might be able to fight just as well as you?”
I jerked my arm out of his grip saying,
“Jeez, relax we’re fine. But we won’t be if we argue.”
I looked around but the little girl was gone.
“Hey, where’d that little girl go?”
“What little girl?” He asked irritably.
“The one that was with the soldiers, she screamed when you killed them. I was going to run down some of them, but I turned and was thrown off my motorcycle when I saw here. She looked just like Kairi.”
“Are you sure you weren’t imagining things? I didn’t see or hear anything.”
“But she was right here.” I retorted, equally irritable.
He sighed, calming down a little and added,
“If there was a little girl she ran for it. Anyway, can we go now?”
I scowled saying,
“Yeah…”
I jogged over to my motorcycle and picked it up thinking,
I suppose I was seeing things…just like that person in white.
The hairs on the back of my neck rose again, and I looked back at the hill above us where the camp was station and on the edge of the hill I saw the person again. I blinked, and once again he or she was gone.
“C’mon!” I heard Cloud call. I scowled and gunned it, passing him. He caught up saying,
“We’re going to have authorities after us, best we stop for the night out of the city once we’re far enough away from the creep squad. If we go all day tomorrow, we’ll reach the coast. we’ll rent a boat that night, and rest for awhile then head out at dark.”
I scowled at him saying,
“I call the shots around here.”
“And you have no idea how Mazar is laid out, how the lawless the cities are, how corrupt the authorities are, and you can’t speak the language.”
“You speak Mazarain?” I asked irritably, since I couldn’t understand a word of it or their font. It wasn’t romaji or some kind of kanji. As far as I was concerned, it was doodles.
“You think I didn’t learn anything in the military?”
“Not really. I guess I didn’t really take into consideration you could understand anything aside from Ragnarokain.”
Damn, now I’m the one who has to clue what anybody is saying…what a disturbing twist of revenge for picking on Cloud about not knowing Nohinog.
“Can you read their hieroglyphics?”
“Yeah.” He replied to my irritation. “You should try connecting to Ragnarok’s satellite systems tonight, you might be able access a news channel and find out if anybody declared war, or is going to.”
“It wouldn’t work, Ragnarok blocked satellite reception of their satellites here in Mazar. there are archenemies.”
“That was five years ago, this is now.”
We were far away from all civilization when we stopped for the night. I tried accessing Ragnarok satellites, and I was disturbed that it worked. Had Trenxi re-programmed their reception range? There was nothing useful though, no word of attacks or counterattacks.
The ice in our cooler had made it through the day, so the lunch meats were still good for another dinner of sandwiches. I did some geographical research on Michi, and some structural research and determined at low tide there would be tons of air pockets within the ruins. Where the Key of Seventh Heaven was? Who knew. I determined the pendant Kuraudo recovered was Skyevi’s Pendant, since it resonated with the sword when it shielded me. I only noticed when I saw the glow fading when we were escaping. So, another words I didn’t know if the Key of Seventh Heaven was even at Michi. The only thing I was going off of was the weird feeling I got.
Cloud had fallen asleep, and after I was positive he wasn’t going to wake up I stood up and grabbed my katanas and slid them in my gun belt. I trudged up the sand dune and when I stood at the top I looked around. I could see for miles, miles of hot and dry sand that is. The creepy thing was that this wasn’t simple and normal tan sand, it was scarlet. What a creepy though; scarlet scan. I was a little disappointed not to see my creepy white friend.
I had a bad feeling, like getting to Michi was going to be the easy part.
“If you’re going after us, Trenxi…I’d rather have you attack now rather than later.”
The next day, we avoided civilization and did our best to travel on dirt roads rather than the parkway. We both knew we’d be killed if authorities found us, presuming we were out-numbered, and that our skin was so much lighter than that of the Mazarains that they wouldn’t be any “blending in with the crowd”.
There weren’t any Ragnarokains in Mazar, and Nohinogs weren’t in northern Mazar.
“It’s like a million degrees out…” I moaned, miserable under the white cloak. Cloud was sweating too, but had been here before so knew the drill. I one the other hand, had never been in such hot climates for so long…
We were walking through the streets of Mazar, getting a few suspicious looks from the Mazarains but nothing more. I was too irritable to care much though. Only thing good about the cloak was that I could carry all my weapons easily. Than again, half the Mazarains carried weapons themselves. There were always civil wars in Mazar in seemed, they’d been trying to kill each other since the beginning of recorded time. I stopped a second and looked back.
The person in white stood a few feet away from us, walking through the crowd. The hairs on the back of my neck nose and I unintentionally tightened my grip on the hilt of my sword.
“What’s wrong?” Cloud asked, looking back but when he did the person was gone.
“Nothing…” I replied, than added, “I just thought I saw somebody I knew.”
“That’s impossible, no Nohinogs or Ragnarokains could be in Mazar.”
“Never mind.” I said, as a gun shot instantly sounded. The crowd froze, and a large battleship covered the sun. It was large and all black, with torpedoes and other cannon lining the front and sides. If you looked closely you could see in large white block letters,
TWI-LIGHT
“Damn…” I cursed as citizens scattered. I looked over on the horizon of the ocean and saw the outlines of large black battleships coming for a second wave of attacks. The ship above us dropped a bomb in the not too far distance. The ground shook and all hell broke loose. Mazarain forces reacted quickly, sending up small ships armed with chain-fire guns.
“Be right back, I’m going to get Skyevi’s Sword, I left it with the motorcycles. He nodded saying,
“Be careful, I’m going to try finding out what the counterattack plan is.”
I dashed off in the opposite director of the crowd, and had a helluva time doing so. I felt a little bad about lying to Cloud, since I had Skyevi’s Sword with me. I wanted to get closer to the attacks, to see if there were any Ragnarok military personnel. If there were, than war had been officially declared. It was a more dangerous way of doing things, but I had to know. I stopped suddenly when I felt somebody watching me again, and looked into the alleyway. I was grabbed by my hair and pulled in, with the person’s hands on my wrists pinning me to the wall. I reacted before I got a good look at him, by bracing my right foot on the wall and jerking forward with my shoulders and leg. He was caught off guard, and his grip slackened enough for me to punch his jaw and come back around and shatter his nose with my elbow. I heard a nice crack and crunch when I punched his jaw, but no satisfactory crushing of his nose.
He cursed and stepped, aiming a pistol he’s drawn from a holster at me.
“So you’re Akhyia Ragnarok. What’s a princess doing around here? This isn’t a very safe place, your ladyship.”
I scowled, meeting his green eyes evenly. He was a wolfish look, and I always found that to be the worst comparison until I saw this guy. He was familiar, vaguely. Or at least I’d seen him five years ago and his sixteen-year-old self a few weeks ago.
“Shove the fancy titles up your ass, Zeev Nimbostratus.”
“Ahhhh, I see Anan still uses that last name. Perhaps I should enlighten him again that only bastards take their mother’s last name. And that’s Zeev Rozarera to you.”
“Pity I don’t really give a damn.” I said drawing my katana, which be blocked quickly with a short twelve-inch blade. He wore the white cloak of the person who’d been following me, but I knew it was a trick, there was no way he was the same person, the person who had been following me was shorter and not masculine at all. With a loud clash of steel to steel, I hit his blade close to the hilt, and since I guessed he wouldn’t be very familiar with the weapon, he dropped it when I jerked toward me in an automatic reaction not to have his hand chopped off. I placed the tip of my katana on his neck as he said,
“You’re good. She’ll have some fun.”
I didn’t hear the others approaching over the chaos, but I felt large hands grabbing my upper arms. I didn’t bother twisting around to see my large male captor, instead simply jerked backwards, throwing him off balance. One nice thing about sexists; they never expect any fight and don’t guard well. Now, I twisted around to break his nose and elbow his temple. I kneed him in the groin to finish him off, and his eyes rolled into the back of his head as he fell. Zeev attempted getting me into a headlock, but ultimately failed since I elbowed his already bruised nose, making him curse and loosen his grip enough for me to worm away.
“Don’t take me lightly.” I said pulling out y conventional pistol and killing the other two Twi-LIGHT guards that approached me before they were even in a foot’s vicinity. He rubbed his now broken nose, even though it had been off-kilter before so I assumed it was at least the second time it had been broken.
“Or else I will kill you.” I added my pistol pointed at his heart.
“Would you now…” He paused before drawing out, “When I’m the only person around who’d tell you what Trenxi was doing to Akiko when you woke up?”
I mentally wavered, but didn’t let it show in my stance.
“Try me.”
He sobered a little saying,
“If you put that gun away, I’d be happy to tell you.”
“I’m not a fool, how about you tell me what’s going and I wait a little while to kill you?”
“That’ll work. I’m a not surprised you’re so violent though, Anan always had crappy taste in women.”
He doesn’t mean anything to me!
“Tell me what he did to her, or you die now. I can tell by your expression you’re out of back-up. I took out nine soldiers, Trenxi likes to send out sets of ten so you’re until he starts wondering what happened to you, if he cares that much.”
“Anan wouldn’t like it if you killed me, the entire reason he travels with you is so he can kill me.”
“I’m good at keeping a secret.”
“You can be sure it’d come back and bit your ass after a while.”
“Doesn’t change a thing.”
“I’m sure Anan wouldn’t like knowing you lied to him.”
“I don’t care.” I growled.
He nodded saying,
“You, as you know, were Trenxi’s toy. You were the perfect prototype because you shared enough genetic similarities with Akiko for the to of you to have roughly the same reaction to Skyevi cells. He figured he could see how much you could take before dying, so he had huge amounts injected into you in quick successions, hence why you fell into a coma. He said that your will to live was unparallel, since last time he injected so much power into a human they died. He determined it had to be done slowly, but since he wanted to kill you he just wanted to test your will. Sine you survived, he kept having you filled with divine power. A lot of the humans developed a form of Evi poisoning from the process if it wasn’t managed perfectly. The only thing he never tried with you was attaching your mind with Skyevi’s. Or what he things Skyevi’s brainwaves are. The Akiko you saw was your sister, and Trenxi had decided to take a risk with her. He did, and it worked. It was the most direct, most effective, and quickest way to turn a human into a half divine being.
“He determined that the Skyevi relics that belonged to Skyevi weren’t the most powerful of them all, and that Blood Crystal, Key of Seventh Heaven, Blood of Fayt, and Infinity Tear held far more power. And that only when those nine relics were together, could End of Time be summoned. End of Time isn’t a physical relic, but instead it’s a force. Trenxi said only the person who could hold all the relics could access End of Time. End of Time is the ultimate Skyevi relic, the reason it’s called “End of Time” is because it’s the power Skyevi herself tried to attain to stop the End of Time.
“Yes, Akhyia. End of Time is the true relic, the true divine power. Skyevi was the ultimate human, nothing could sway her judgment. But she didn’t know how human she was. He didn’t understand she couldn’t stop the End of Time, but merely be the first step in the right direction. I know what you’re wondering; if Trenxi is trying to continue Skyevi’s work, than why Akiko and not you? It isn’t just because he hates you, it’s because you hated him. I’d love to tell you why this affects things, but alas, Trenxi wouldn’t like it. I hear you’ve been getting visions, It’s very interesting you can wield Skyevi’s Sword and the Blood Crystal, it’s be suspicious if it weren’t for the fact you’re so full of divine power. You’re hardly human.”
“You didn’t tell me very much.” I said irritably.
The sound of the battle above was deafening, Mazar had full counterattack ready and I hadn’t heard the approach of two Twi-LIGHT soldiers. All I heard was the crack of bullets being fired and a burning pain in my right shoulder, left thy, and my right arm. I dropped my katana upon impact, and lost my footing thudding against the opposite ally wall, groping for Skyevi’s Sword with my left hand. Zeev moved first, and I drew Skyevi’s katana, running him through before pain got the best of me.
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