Chapter Eighteen: Regrets (I1B0C18)

Chapter Eighteen: Regrets

 

“Hey, Vaida, did you say something?” Hatasuko muttered sleepily.

Hatasuko opened his tired eyes and glanced around the upstairs room. The flickering candles lightly interrupted the darkness. Vaida slept peacefully beside him with her face pressed against his side, and her little hands clung onto his chest. He glanced around to search for the sound that pulled him from his sleep, but everything inside the room was quiet. However, he heard several shouts and voices from the street outside the inn. It seemed like a strange time for people to be outside and hollering.

“The tempest is restless like never before. The lost souls are furiously pronouncing their pain. These screams are deafening. Why are they screaming now? Why do I hear them?” Hatasuko asked, knowing that he would not fall back asleep.

The entire room shook from a citywide tremor. A clamorous roar boomed from elsewhere in Bones City; it was certainly the sound of shadow spheres detonating. The massive tremor extinguished the candles. Vaida was startled from her sleep and jumped onto her feet, and then she fell to the floor when she heard a distant explosion.

“It’s here! This can’t be a coincidence. The Interfectus is chasing us,” Hatasuko said as he threw himself off the mattress.

The adrenaline rush provided Hatasuko and Vaida with enough energy to prepare for battle. They both equipped their whips, rocks, shields, and swords. After opening the window and peering through it, he saw that the transparent layer of blackness had already eclipsed the stars. The avatar of all anguish stood behind a curtain of glowing smoke; Hatasuko saw its golden eyes pierce the darkness. The Interfectus then lifted its massive foot and slammed it down upon the block beneath it. Smoke and wreckage flew off like a cloud around its leg. Hatasuko prepared to jump from the window and into the street, but Vaida grabbed his arm.

            Before the city stopped shaking, Vaida whispered, “I thought the memories were locked in my nightmares, but I forgot who my enemy is. The Interfectus is a nightmare’s incarnate, and so it gives life only to pain.”

“Bones City will not fall; we will make sure of that. Are you ready?”

Vaida nodded. Still clinging to his arm, Vaida lifted her feet off the ground. Hatasuko jumped through the open window, slammed his feet onto the dirt street below, and then took off running toward the demon of flashing blades and shifting shadows. Through the cloud of dust and smoke, they ran hand-in-hand toward the Interfectus.

“Forsaken! We’re forsaken! God can see us, but he will not save us! The Interfectus is here by divine decree!” announced a man from the roof of a building.

The shadow claw of the Interfectus tore through this man’s body with a quintuple splash of blood. The demon lifted its victim high into the air, spread its dagger fingers, and tore him to shreds in a matter of milliseconds. The evacuating citizens screamed as they saw this execution, but screams turned to shouts when the shadow claw transformed into a sword.

“Let go of me! Don’t let them die!” Vaida screamed frantically from behind.

Hatasuko knew Vaida was distraught, but he also knew that he had very little time to block the next attack. Therefore, he let go of her and accelerated to his fastest speed. He then swung back his sword and prepared his power. At that exact moment, the Interfectus tilted its blade and swung it diagonally at the evacuees. Hatasuko glared with his golden eyes, unsure if he would arrive in time to block the strike, but then the monster yanked its shadow sword just slightly away from him. He now had no chance. He watched helplessly as a single slash dismembered seven civilians. The shadow sword crashed through a small home on the right side of the street, destroyed it instantly, and then retracted back into the monster’s body.

“Mama, no, please, no! This can’t be real! Mama, please say something,” screamed a boy in the street.

            In a state of shock and horror, Hatasuko watched the boy prod his mother’s corpse on the right side of the bloodstained street. The top half of his head had been torn off by the shadow blade. His bloody brain was exposed to the smoky air; his eyes shone with a golden glow as he clenched his mother’s hand.

Though it was an involuntary reaction, Hatasuko dropped to his knees in the street. He stared on as the dying boy begged his mother to somehow cling to life. He begged her to somehow say it was a dream, but his words became slurred and nearly incomprehensible as his brain bled out in the street.

“Hatasuko! Don’t look, don’t watch, don’t remember! Please, please stand back up,” Vaida said, wrapping her arms around him from behind.

As a deafening explosion shook the city to the east, Hatasuko watched the child die in the street beside them. He then felt another confused, lost, miserable soul cross from life into the endless abyss. With tears in his eyes, he rose to his feet and hooked his shield onto his back.

“Scattershot!” Vaida exclaimed, pointing at the airspace in front of the Interfectus.

Without delay, Vaida tossed a rock into the air and began running; Hatasuko caught the rock and activated his power. As his roaring muscles glowed with energy, he launched the rock with so much speed that it unleashed a sonic boom. The weapon ascended so quickly that it struck the scattershot before the Interfectus launched it. Every shadow sphere detonated and engulfed the monster’s upper half with blue fire. The Interfectus stumbled backward from the fiery shockwave, so its massive foot smashed through more homes in the heart of Bones City.

Hatasuko sprinted after Vaida, but once again, he was too slow; the demon counterattacked with a sudden slash from its shadow sword. Vaida flinched because she thought that the monster had aimed for her, but instead it tore through a running family just a couple blocks away. And though he could not see it, Hatasuko felt their souls get severed from bodies. The streets shook from the impact of buildings collapsing, but the tremors were not enough to stop him. He and Vaida accelerated as they ran toward the Interfectus.

“It’s a fast shot! Double throw, double throw!” Hatasuko yelled.

Vaida and Hatasuko stopped running simultaneously. As the Interfectus shot down another cluster of shadow bombs, they both threw a rock at the same time. Though they aimed blindly, relying on chance alone to stop the scattershot, Hatasuko activated his power and launched his rock with overwhelming speed. He threw it in such a way that it would strike the Interfectus even if he missed the shadow spheres, and his gamble was rewarded; the high-speed projectile blew through the scattershot and struck the distant monster.

Sixteen bursts of blue fire drowned out the screams of fleeing citizens. The fiery shockwave engulfed a tall building at the end of the next block; Hatasuko and Vaida both flinched when they heard a scream from inside the burning building. They both ran toward the scream, but Hatasuko knew that Vaida lost focus on everything else.

            “We can try to save them, but don’t run into the flames!” Hatasuko yelled.

“Why not? We’re the only ones who can help!” Vaida exclaimed.

“Because you’re more vital than they are! You save scores of lives every time we fight. They don’t! Your life is worth a lot more than theirs,” Hatasuko reasoned.

But Vaida retorted, “My life isn’t worth anything! When I think about the man who gave his life to save me from the flames, I hate it. I hate that he made that sacrifice! It wasn’t worth it; I wasn’t worth it! That’s why I fight so fearlessly. Because I’m risking something I shouldn’t have to begin with.”

When they arrived outside the door of the burning building, Vaida ripped apart the door with a double sword slash. The smoke glowed from the fiery light, but she ran inside so quickly that Hatasuko could not follow her; she knew that he would stop her if he could.

As if it had waited for her to run inside, the Interfectus swung its shadow spear down from the flashing sky. The spear flew high enough to strike the burning building’s second story; it would collapse the structure with Vaida trapped inside. While sweat and panic overtook him, Hatasuko ripped his shield off his back and threw it upward with a quick flick of his wrist.

The spear flew faster than his shield. The first weapon of the Interfectus blew through the building and crumbled the structure; the third story collapsed onto the second. A flashing cloud of sparks and cinders burst into the air. Hatasuko yelled, spun, and swung his sword through the wall with enough strength to destroy it. As the second floor collapsed onto the first, a fiery backdraft blew through the hole and engulfed him, but he swung his sword with so much force that the flames diverged.

“VAIDA! WHERE ARE YOU?” Hatasuko screamed as he ran into the flames.

            At the other end of the burning shambles which were once this building, Vaida stood with her back pressed against a corner. She clenched a little girl in her shaking arms. Though Vaida was terrified to the point that her strong arms trembled uncontrollably, the little girl was untouched by the flames.

With several swings of his sword, Hatasuko tore a path straight through the wreckage until he reached her. Bones City shuddered again as the Interfectus stomped its foot in the distance, but he ignored the deafening screams in his head.

“Vaida! We have to get out of here. The Interfecti do not go easy on children; it won’t hesitate to attack again. The girl can run away on her own,” Hatasuko said.

With the glow of fire shimmering in her tear-filled eyes, Vaida looked up and whispered, “No, Hatasuko. No, she cannot.”

Hatasuko looked down at the girl clenched in Vaida’s arms. Her skin was stained with ash, smoke lifted from her hair, but none of her skin appeared to be burned. Nevertheless, the little girl’s mouth and eyes hung open. Her blue eyes stared hollowly; her chest was completely motionless. The black residue of smoke and ash stained her teeth. A trickle of tears ran down Vaida’s face and cleansed the ash from her cheeks.

            “She suffocated in the smoke. She was strangled from this world by the darkness,” Vaida whispered as she lowered the girl onto the smoldering debris.

“I don’t think we should stay here. The Interfectus planned to fight us here for a reason. I can’t let anything happen to you; I’m scared I might not be able to protect you. Let’s run! Let’s leave the city, and then the Interfecti can’t enact whatever sick plans they have for us,” Hatasuko said to his shaken friend.

Vaida sheathed her swords in the holster on her back, grabbed her whip with her right hand, and grabbed her shield with her left. She glared at the Interfectus with her good eye as her dead eye stared at the burning wreckage around them. She lifted her left foot, kicked off the half-crumbled wall behind her, and raced toward the Interfectus with a sudden jolt. As she ran through the smoke and between the flashing flames, she said, “I won’t run away from this.”

Inspired by her intrepid decision, Hatasuko did the same. He broke what was left of the smoldering wall when he tried to kick off of it, but he quickly regained his balance and ran after his friend. However, he did not follow her directly; he made a detour to grab his black shield from the street.

Though the Interfectus had not yet destroyed the long road ahead of Vaida, it was scattered with debris as people ran from the monster. Vaida dashed in the opposite direction of the evacuees. With every step, she remembered that it had already taken everything from her once, many years ago in this same place.

The Interfectus suddenly attacked by extending its massive claw, but the fleeing citizens diverged and dodged this attack. The shadow claw then lunged at Vaida with terrifying speed, but she jumped out of the way. As she flew through the smoky air, the Interfectus tried to dismember her from behind with its dagger-like fingers. But in midair, she flung her whip forward with a deafening crack. The edge of her whip enwrapped a spoke on a wagon wheel, so Vaida pulled in swiftly and flung herself away from the shadow claw. As soon as her running feet hit the ground, she yanked her whip free and raced toward the Interfectus.

            The Interfectus attacked again with a tremendous slash from its extended right arm. This shadow blade flew down from the sky like a diagonal guillotine; it was a second away from slaughtering Vaida and an evacuee. Since the frightened man ran toward her without knowing of the danger, Vaida jumped up, slammed her feet against him, and then kicked with all her strength. The impact sent him flying off to the right, and the recoil threw Vaida to the left. When the guillotine blade struck the street between them, shaking the whole block, Vaida landed on the dirt street and resumed running toward the monster.

Since the shadow blade was so long, Hatasuko lunged at its far end with a mighty swing of his sword. During the swing, he activated his power, but the Interfectus was faster; it retracted its arm just milliseconds before he would have destroyed it. His sword tore clear through the street without slowing down at all, though the impact twisted his giant body. After a complete swing of the sword, he realized that he still controlled his brief flash of superstrength, so he followed through with his swing and threw his sword at the monster.

The sword broke the speed of sound with an earsplitting crack. When it struck the monster in the chest, its armor exploded with a burst of sparks and steel. Shards of broken armor rained down from the demon; the sword had shattered and sent a storm of shrapnel into its body.

            Vaida realized that her golden-eyed friend had distracted the Interfectus, so she ran at a more conspicuous speed. Though smoke and exhaustion oppressed her motion, she charged heedlessly through the ashy streets. She was only three blocks away from the floating feet of the Interfectus.

The Interfectus triggered its first weapon, transformed its left hand into a shadow claw, and thrust it at Hatasuko. He noticed that the Interfectus did not twist its body to hasten the strike—suggesting that his last attack had done major damage. Nevertheless, he knew he had to act fast; five shadow daggers lunged toward him. He threw himself aside, twisted in midair, and pulled up his shield. The Interfectus veered and slammed its massive claws at him from a different angle. The finger-blades hit his shield like an open-hand slap; the impact slammed his back into a brick wall, shaking the entire building.

Though his back pressed against the wall and his feet dangled over the ground, his thin shield was the only thing between his body and the demon’s claws. The Interfectus could not break the shield by squeezing its claws, so instead it transformed its arm into a shadow blade.

With a sudden slash, the Interfectus tore partway through Hatasuko’s shins. As he yelled from the excruciating pain, blood spewed from the double injury. He fell onto his feet, but since his torn legs could not sustain his weight, he fell again onto his knees. Before the Interfectus retracted its weapon, Hatasuko activated his power; he spent the last of his quintessence on a desperate counterattack. He slammed his glowing fist into the sword of shadows, shattered the entire segment, and forced the demon’s arm to snap partway down.

Despite this injury, the Interfectus slammed its massive foot down upon a distant street. The city shook and shuddered from the earthquake; the nearest building collapsed onto Hatasuko as he knelt in the dirt street. When the cloud of starlit dust faded, he was buried beneath a pile of shambles.

Meanwhile, since Vaida moved undetected by the monster’s golden eyes, she ran to the back of a large building. She was only one block away from the floating demon. With a quick slash of her swords, she tore her way into the backdoor of a piscileo processing factory. This factory was one of many in Bones City, but Vaida knew she could use it to access a powerful weapon.

“That narrowing hose has to be here somewhere. Come on, where is it? Where is it?” Vaida whispered to herself.

As the city shook outside, Vaida saw a giant tank of piscileo oil at the far end of the room. Some entrepreneurs had used this oil to fuel lamps and other minor amenities, but the oil tank was generally just waste. She glanced around the area until she finally found a large hose laid out on the floor. Though the hose was motionless, Vaida frantically ran alongside it, following it from the narrow end toward the wider end. The deafening sound of a fiery explosion emanated from the east; the ground beneath her feet shook from the shockwaves.

            When Vaida reached the far end of the hose, she found it hooked into the bottom of a very large tank of water. She recognized this narrowing hose as one of the first machines she had ever studied. The tube was very wide on one end, but it gradually narrowed so that water would speed up tremendously inside it. By the time a water stream would emerge from the thin opening at its far end, it would flow fast enough to tear the skin off a piscileo. Nevertheless, Vaida threw her little hands onto the hose and twisted it until it disconnected from the tank. She held it closely in her hands as she dashed back over to the oil tank, but she stopped when she noticed a teenage girl hiding in the shadows.

Vaida asked the terrified girl, “Do you know how to hook up the hose? Can you please do it for me? I need it on the oil tank! I’m begging you.”

“Yes, I know how. I can do that,” she answered, though her eyes were frantic.

Vaida tossed the thick hose as far as she could toward the girl, and then she ran in the opposite direction. She ran along the narrowing hose until she finally reached its far end. Two metal shafts stuck out of the nozzle so that a person could easily control it with both hands, so she grabbed it by these shafts.

A flash of fiery light lit up the city; the blue glow shone through a window up ahead. When the glow disappeared, Vaida saw the Interfectus clearly through this window, so she destroyed the glass with a quick spinning kick. She grabbed the nearest flaming candle, jammed the bottom of it between the metal prongs in the window frame, and steadied the nozzle behind the flame. She then threw her head over her right shoulder.

Though her dead right eye could not see the frightened girl or the oil tank, Vaida yelled out, “Remove the seal!”

The girl pulled the large lever that sealed the opening to the oil tank. Since the opening was at the bottom of the massive tank, the pressure was very high, and therefore oil surged into the wide end of the hose at a high speed. It charged through the long tube and quickly accelerated. In just under three seconds, the first spurt of high-speed oil shot forth from the narrow nozzle, struck the candle, and instantly burst into fire. This giant flamethrower shot into the sky; the concentrated flames struck the legs of the Interfectus and then engulfed it like a cloud of fire.

            As Vaida unleashed the tremendous stream of fire, she tilted the shafts and aimed the nozzle even higher than before. She expelled the stream of burning oil so quickly that her dark hair flew behind her head from the hot wind. The high-temperature backdrafts eventually ignited the window frame with tiny embers. Vaida watched these flames grow, but she focused on the way that the Interfectus strived to protect itself.

At first, it tried to deflect the flamethrower by swinging its arms, but this achieved nothing; its black-steel armor glowed red from the heat. Before long, the Interfectus used its second weapon to summon a shadow shield, but even this failed. Vaida merely tilted the hose nozzle and directed the flames in a different direction. The orange stream of bursting flames fell beneath the shield and struck the pelvis region on the Interfectus.

“I still can’t tell if I’m hurting it. It’s like the shield and flames are playing hide-and-seek. But maybe this will give people enough time to escape. The Interfectus won’t kill my city again. Never again,” she whispered.

The window frame was now completely ablaze. Vaida backed up so that the fire would not ride the backdrafts and strike her. As she clenched her teeth, steadied the nozzle, and blasted the flamethrower at the monster, she used every muscle in her body to hold herself in place. The sweat on her face shimmered from the light of flashing flames; her scars were illuminated by the weapon which had stopped the Interfectus.

            Meanwhile, as Hatasuko stumbled through the ashen streets with his hands on his knees, he glanced over his shoulder and saw a trail of blood behind him. He could not run due to the state of his shins, but he stumbled toward the demon as quickly as he could. As he walked, an array of black fire appeared beneath his feet, engulfing him with the energy that fueled his power. Nevertheless, he smiled every time he glanced at the shadow demon hiding behind its shield. Though he did not know how she did it, he knew that Vaida had created this spectacular fire weapon. The inferno that engulfed the Interfectus also illuminated the city; the glare shrouded every star in the sky.

“If I can get there in time, if it stays locked in place long enough, then maybe I can kill it. Perhaps tonight’s the night that the first Interfectus falls forever. I can feel it in my bones! There’s a chorus of lost souls cheering us on; all of the afterlife is standing in our corner,” Hatasuko whispered.

            The roaring tempest transformed from cheering to screaming. Hatasuko braced himself as the Interfectus jumped into the sky; a shockwave rolled across the city from the motion of this jump. Vaida tried to follow its flying feet, but the Interfectus went too high and too fast. In its throne in the sky, flying far above the smoke-stained streets, the Interfectus unleashed its third weapon and summoned a scattershot of shadow spheres. Its scorching armor glowed red, but this did not slow it down. It launched the scattershot as swiftly as it could; every shadow sphere shot toward the factory building.

With an urgent rush of adrenaline, Hatasuko grabbed two rocks from his bag and activated his power; he launched them both in the sky with supersonic speed. Despite his incredible strength, he had simply thrown from too far away. The rocks flew well over the shadow spheres because he had misjudged the distance. A moment later, every shadow sphere crashed upon the roof of the factory building and detonated. There were seventeen simultaneous explosions of blue fire. The four-story factory collapsed on itself with an earthshaking burst of flames.

Although he ran faster than ever before on wounded legs which could not support his weight, Hatasuko felt paralyzed. The adrenaline turned to ice in his veins. As he dashed toward the flaming factory at full speed, the voices in the tempest warped into a horrifying chorus of taunting sneers. He knew he had imagined it; he knew that the lost souls were not against him, but it mirrored his crushing sense of dread.

            “Vaida, you have to still be there. Damn it, Vaida, you have to be okay! I already lost everything to the Interfectus; it cannot happen again. Not to you! Anyone but you,” Hatasuko said in between pained gasps as he ran toward the burning building.

Blood sputtered from the gashes in his legs with every running step. The wounds were deeper than he originally realized, but it didn’t stop him. Only one thing mattered. He was only a block away from the burning wreckage which had once been the piscileo factory. Hatasuko sprinted toward it without regard to pain, his blood loss, or the eyes of the Interfectus floating over the wreckage. It was only by luck that the monster did not see him; a thick cloak of black smoke blocked its golden eyes.

Hatasuko ran into the flaming shambles, looking ahead only enough that he ran through the wreckage which had not yet caught fire. Thick smoke flooded the air; he detected a familiar stench beneath the stronger scent of oil. His blood turned to ice when he recognized the stench of burning flesh, and his breath stopped when he saw a burning body crawling away from debris. This body stopped crawling before he reached it. He was horrified by the possibility that he had watched Vaida burn to death, but he managed to stop and see that that this person was too short. This was not Vaida.

On half-torn legs covered in ash and blood, Hatasuko ran deeper into the inferno. He saw a large opening in the burning wreckage, almost like an oasis in a firestorm. He ran through the flames toward this clearing. As he ran, the flames scorched his legs and forced his blood to sizzle. The jagged rocks and twisted metal cut through his smoldering shoes. He ran into a giant cloud of steam which plumed from the burning wreckage, and soon he found Vaida lying on her back. The steam swirled around her. Her eyes were open, but she stared into the smoky sky.

As Hatasuko ran across the clearing, he realized that glass and water scattered the ground. A huge tank of water had shattered in this place; it was the only reason that the inferno had not devoured Vaida. When he reached her, he dropped onto his bloody knees and inspected her, looking for injuries.

            Vaida’s body shimmered from the light of the fire that raged around them. Deep bruises stained the left side of her body; her blood stained the thin puddle around her. She was motionless and unresponsive. With a body-shaking rush of fear, Hatasuko suspected that smoke inhalation had taken her life. He glared at her chest and confirmed that she was breathing. Vaida was alive, but she did not move.

“Shadow bombs hit the building. It collapsed on you. It’s just like that night. You probably had to crawl here! Oh, Vaida, your heart wasn’t ready to handle this,” Hatasuko whispered, wiping the tears from his eyes.

“And just like everything else, it will only get worse from here,” Adishina whispered from the edge of the tempest.

Hatasuko saw that the flashing flames grew closer by the second. The flames boiled the edge of the puddle, evaporated the water in the wooden floor, and slowly approached Vaida.

“You’ve already lost so much to fire. I won’t let it take you. I promise you. I promise I won’t let you die in here,” Hatasuko said to her catatonic body.

“You shouldn’t promise something you know you can’t deliver. Hope only exists to strengthen the power of darkness. It makes us believe there’s some way out of the shadows when there so obviously is not, and then it all just hurts ten times worse,” said Adishina.

“It’s not hopeless. It can’t be hopeless.”

Hatasuko lifted his paralyzed friend into his big arms and stood to his full height. The process of standing caused blood to leak from the gashes on his shins. The flames burned so brightly that he could hardly see the wreckage. There was no path through the fire. The inferno had surrounded them, and since it was fueled by a large presence of oil, it would not burn itself out. There was no escape. The flames would inevitably evaporate the rest of the water and engulf them. Hatasuko’s legs afflicted him with excruciating pain as punishment for standing, so he lowered himself and his friend into the tiny puddle.

“I won’t let it take you, Vaida. I won’t let it.”

Hatasuko lowered his giant body on top of his catatonic friend, completely covering her. As they huddled there, in the shrinking oasis as the walls of the inferno inched closer, he stared into her hollow eyes. Her scars shone from the light of the fire. He stayed like this for a short while, almost completely motionless.

            “Would you really sacrifice yourself? As dark as you’ve become, you are still humankind’s only chance,” whispered Adishina.

“This is my life. This is my sacrifice,” Hatasuko muttered in response.

“Don’t do it. Please don’t do it. Please run; I’m not worth it. I’m not worth your sacrifice. I’m not worth your life,” Vaida whispered from underneath.

            Despite these words, her teary eyes remained empty. Except for an intense fit of shivering, Vaida remained motionless. Her fingertips clawed against the ground as she spoke again in a frantic voice.

            “I’m not worth anything! I’m not worth this. Please go. Dad, please run. Please. Please!”

            “What? No, Vaida, you’re dreaming! That isn’t, I mean, I guess it is, but—”

            “GET OFF OF ME!” Vaida screamed.

            Vaida slammed her fists into Hatasuko’s chest. He lifted himself slightly off her body as the flashing flames danced closer. With tears streaming from her furious eyes, Vaida slammed her fists against him again and again.

            “I WON’T LET YOU DO THIS! Hatasuko, get off. GET THE FUCK OFF OF ME! Don’t you dare sacrifice yourself for this. I won’t let you. I won’t let you. I won’t let you. I won’t let you. I won’t let you. I won’t let you. I won’t let you,” she said, hitting him again with every repetition.

            “I won’t let go of you. I won’t let the flames take you.”

            Vaida fell silent. Her fists dropped to her sides. She fell flat against the wet floor as her tear-soaked face glistened from the fiery glow. She whispered through her tears, “I hate you, dad. I hate you so much for leaving me. You left me to live with this pain all alone. I won’t ever forgive you. I won’t ever forgive you.”

            “This is a sacrifice I have to make, Vaida.”

            “This is a sacrifice that no one asked you to make. I hate myself, Hatasuko! I hate myself, I hate my fragile heart, I hate my ugly scars, I hate my memories, and I hate that death is the only way to escape any of it. I hate that I lost my parents. I hate that they died just trying to protect me. I hate that they were so wasteful. I hate that they didn’t stop to think about how much it would hurt me. I hate that I see him burn every time I see my scars. I hate that this one memory has this much power over me. Please, please don’t make me go through that again. Just let me burn. Just let the fire take the girl it created. Don’t let me watch you die too.”

            Hatasuko stayed silent for almost a minute, processing everything that she said. He did not notice that he was crying until his ashy tears dripped onto her face. Though she was conscious now, Vaida still shivered uncontrollably. Her eyes were slammed shut, and her fingertips dug into the wood at her sides. The flames were closer than ever.

            “Hatasuko, please listen to me. I think there’s a way out of this. When you activate your Astrodeus power, your body and your weapon become unbreakable, right? That’s the only way your sword survives striking an Interfectus,” Adishina offered.

            “Yes, I think so,” Hatasuko answered.

            “Then grab the far end of your shield. Hold it like a fan, use your power, and make a gust of wind. It won’t destroy the fire, but it can make a path,” Adishina suggested.

            “I have to try it. Vaida, you’re half-right. I cannot die in here, but neither can you! We’re getting out. Stay down, but get ready to run. You’ll probably run faster than me,” Hatasuko said.

            Without waiting for an explanation, Vaida crouched and glared at the flames. Hatasuko detached his shield, stood up, and pulled it back with both hands. With a luminous activation of his power, he swung his shield with so much force that he spun around six times in a single second. A tremendous gust of wind flew out from his glowing shield, struck the flames, and blew them aside. Vaida lunged out and sprinted across the path with the fewest flames; he followed her before the inferno could rekindle. When they emerged onto the dirt street, their bodies were so exhausted that they collapsed together in the ashes. They watched from a short distance as the factory building burned.

             “You were too willing to let yourself die,” Vaida whispered.

            “I don’t want to see you in pain ever again,” he answered.

            “Please stop lying, Hatasuko. Please stop hiding yourself from me! I know you want to protect me… and you see me as helpless, fragile, hopeless. I know. But it’s more than that. You’re more like me than you realize. You’re just as hurt as I am, and you want to escape. You want to escape this just as much as I do! I have one eye that can only see the past, but both of your eyes are locked in darkness,” she said.

            As the rampaging monster assaulted the city in the distance, Vaida shifted her gaze and stared at his golden eyes. Her scars looked sharper than before; the extreme heat had irritated her burns. She said to him with a dejected stare, “I may seem like the one who’s tragically sad, but that’s because you hide your heart in a steel box. Our friendship works because misery loves company, and no one in this world is as miserable as you.”