An Eye for an Eye

"What are we doing here, captain?"

Louise looked to her left to see her companion, Aaykay, a Wolyn class Hunter. The look of curiosity was on his face as he looked back at her. Currently, both were flying over the sands of the Amazon Desert. Louise gave a sigh and started to sort through her memory banks until she found what she wanted – a briefing of the current mission that they're taking. The mission itself was simply explained; the briefing told her of a potential Ravager within sector Z7, roughly 34 kilometres away from Bans. To the simple and ignorant ones, they might think that 34 kilometres is a far away location, but to the Hunters and Council members, that distance is too close for comfort.

"So… what do we do when we actually see a Ravager in sector Z7? It's not like both of us are capable of taking it out, we need a whole battalion for this kind of mission,"

Louise grinned, "Listen well, rookie, while the Ravager is danger close, the Ravager is also under threat,"

Aaykay raised his eyebrow. It took a moment before the Wolyn Hunter realised what his captain was talking about. When she noticed his realisation, she grinned and spoke again. "Those guns in Bans aren't just for show you know, first we locate where the Ravager is, confirm that its in sector Z7 and we leave the rest to the guns!"

With Aaykay's curiosity sated, he looked in front of him, a feeling of eagerness welling up inside of him at the thought of Bans' legendary guns firing upon a Ravager. Seconds turn to minutes and minutes turns to hours before they finally reached the sector where there is a suspected Ravager. Both cyborgs started scanning the surroundings, looking for anything that's out of place, be it a black dot in the distance, a trail on the sand or a large area completely glassed by the Ravager's ever adapting arsenal.

This went on for a few more hours, the sun had finally touched the horizon and a hue of orange engulfed the desert, the shadows of sand dunes and mutated plants lengthened giving off an ominous feeling. Louise and Aaykay sighed, showing clear signs of annoyance since they're both cyborgs, fatigue never even crossed their minds.

"Say, is the Ravager even here Captain?" Aaykay said, boredom clear in his voice.

"If the Council said that there is a Ravager here, then there is Ravager here. Protocol states that if they pick up signs of a Ravager, Hunters are sent and are told to search the whole sector for the next three days," Louise grinned. "Don't worry, most Ravagers are found within the second day and if we don't find anything then at least we can be assured that Bans isn't in danger,"

"I suppose… but isn't there a better way to pass the time while we search for it?"

Louise tapped her chin, a second later, an idea popped in her head, looking at the rookie Wolyn she spoke. "Want to hear some stories about me?"

Upon hearing that, Aaykay's face turned into that of shock, "W-Wait, f-for real!?"

Louise nodded, "ask me anything and I'll tell the story behind it,"

Aaykay's features then shifted into a frown, he closed his eyes shut, thinking of a good question to ask to his captain. His eyes opened and he looked at her, "How did you get the title of 'Devil'?"

"Urk!" Louise froze. 'T-That… I-I suppose I could tell you the history behind that…" she winced as her memories during that time start to catch up to her.

Boots on dirt were one of the sounds that were heards in the long, dark and damp tunnel, the dark however was pushed back when light suddenly filled up the tunnel. Tabitha set her staff down once she had finished casting a clairvoyance spell, a type of spell that will release a mote of light that will follow its caster. While it did provide light, which makes it easier for both Kirche and her to see and traverse the tunnel without tripping, the light was obviously not stong enough to reach the end of the tunnel.

Kirche looked at the mote of light with some slight amusement before looking to her friend with a smile. "Thanks, Tabby!"

The girl in question responded to her gratitude with a hum. Looking forward both noticed that Louise had been staring at them with impatience, while she wasn't rude enough to interrupt something, she certainly didn't hide the fact that they were wasting valuable time. This seemed to irk the red-head a bit and stepped up.

"Some 'thanks' would be appreciated since now all of us can see in this tunnel,"

Louise looked at Kirche with a deadpan look before turning around and continued walking. This rude display made Kirche cock up an eyebrow. Just when she was going to say the same thing again, she was stopped when a Tabitha's hand pulled on her school cape. Turning around, the blue haired girl shook her head left and right. Kirche seemed to contemplate on this before relenting with a sigh.

Louise, Tabitha and Kirche all continued walking down the long tunnel, boredom slowly clawing its way out of Kirche's mind. She tried to sate it by looking around, checking for anything that will give her mind something to think about even for just a few seconds. Unfortunately, all she could see was dirt not much can really be drawn out of something that she steps on in a daily basis. With nothing else to look at, she looked at Louise. She could certainly see and feel the difference between the Louise that she knew before and after the Familiar Summoning Festival. There was an air of professionalism around her, the 'no fooling around' kind of feel. Aside from that, their conversation from the other night made her look at Louise at a different angle.

As Louise told her, she had no qualms with taking a life and that she was already a broken person, what unnerved her was how easily she had accepted that. She had seen soldiers that work under her family name deny that they were suffering from traumatic events, hence why it makes her wonder why is she accepting about her broken state. Of course, she could assume that she's only saying that because she wants to stay away from her but how can she really think that when she had killed a student with a wide grin on her face.

Her thoughts were put on halt when she had noticed the walls of the tunnel brightening up. Further up ahead of them, they could see where bright light penetrated the tunnel and stretching its rays of light at them. Another minute of walking, they had finally reached the hole and climbed out of it. Once they were outside they were greeted by an open area surrounded with lush trees.

"This just makes things so much easier," Kirche said.

Tabitha on the other hand doesn't say anything and turned her gaze towards Louise who was already looking down in the ground. Her vision was filled with grids that told her of indentations that were both natural and unnatural. There were footprints of creatures, one in particular was a fresh large four fingered paw that was three times the size of Louise's fist. While the pink haired cyborg knows that nothing in this forest can go toe to toe with her she should still take note of that footprint in the event that it comes back.

"Search for clues… anything that's been disturbed recently," Louise said before walking away from the group, still looking down at the ground.

Meanwhile, Kirche was staring at Louise's back, a look of offense on her face. Her brows slowly furrowed, she tried to get closer to give Louise a piece of her mind but she was halted when Tabitha's staff blocked her way. Kirche looked at the blue haired girl with an irritated look. To answer Kirche's expression, Tabitha merely shook her head before giving a vocal answer.

"Pointless, she's too focused,"

The weight of her words surprised Kirche, thinking about it again and the reason behind why Louise wanted to hunt this thief down, it wasn't for reputation, it was something that Kirche understood clearly and why she now understood why Louise was so… cold. While she wasn't being cold to them in particular, she could still sense the chilling aura Louise emanated. The motivation of wanting revenge was something that she understood all too clearly. Germania was a warring kingdom with multiple nations vying for complete domination of the continent, it was evident that a person that she knew would die during her family's ambitious conquest for the continent's rule. She knew the feeling of revenge, the only difference between her and Louise though is that she never acted upon it.

Not because she didn't have the power but it was more on the political side. Having a reputation of killing people from different nations will not bode well for her reputation. Especially since she knew she was just used as a bargaining chip for her father so that he will have more favour when fighting other nations. Wedding a noble that's double her age all for her father's benefit. She didn't like the idea of being used so when she finally came of age, she told her father straight up about how she loathed him and his stupid ambition. Of course, she received a harsh scolding and hard slap on the face but to her it was totally worth it.

Coming back to the current event she followed Tabitha, helping along with the search for any clues for the thief. The day went by quicker when no one found anything and before they knew it, dusk had reached, behind the forest, the sun begun its final descent and its two lunar siblings began to rise.

Louise deployed her flaps and broke right just in time to avoid a large arm made of stone. She turned around, facing the 200 feet stone giant. She berated herself for getting caught of guard, this had all started a few hours earlier when she had detected a trail. She didn't bother telling Kirche and Tabitha as she knew both girls would be deadweights and bringing them along brings the risk of casualties. The trail ended at an abandoned shack but a quick scan based on the dust placement in the place later found out that it was recently used; footprints were spotted and there were lines that were cleared of dust. When she entered the shack all she found was a crate. She didn't have time to fully scan its contents as the shack was promptly ripped out from its foundation. The one responsible for such wanton destruction was the stone golem that she's fighting right now.

She had led the golem far away from the search area so that it wouldn't catch the attention of both Kirche and Tabitha but such a tactic was merely temporary, the tremors of the earth can still be felt and it won't be long before both best friends make their way towards her direction. She has to stop this monster as soon as possible. She would've preferred to use the railgun on the golem once again but she knew that such an attack would further hasten the arrival of both Tabitha and Kirche so she had to come up with a new plan; slice it down to pieces.

She didn't know everything about her enemy so she needed to gather as much information as she could with the given time frame. She deployed her searing, chained, arm blades and with a boost of speed that brought her to subsonic speeds, she charged the golem. Dealing damage to the golem was easy enough; it was too large and its movement was really slow compared to her superior speed. Her first target was the golem's right arm, in a less than three seconds, she crossed the gap between her and the golem and within that time frame, she had also cut of the golem's right arm like a hot knife through butter.

The section of the arm where Louise chopped fell off, the magical essence which was holding the arm in place disappeared and when it fell down to the earth, it fell in a shower of debris. Louise showed some slight amusement when the golem looked at its amputated arm and back to her. Of course, being a magical construct, such damage meant nothing. Undeterred by the damage, that was cause by her, the golem pushed on and with its other, still connected hand, attempted to crush Louise with it.

If Louise had been a Wolyn Class Hunter, dodging such a large target would've been a little troublesome since she would've been build specifically for firepower. But she was not a Wolyn Class Hunter, she was a Klein Class Hunter; a Hunter that's built specifically for speed. So dodging such a large target like the golem, isn't a problem. Especially now since her body could pretty much model herself between both classes of Hunters. She swerved to the left, easily dodging the large arm in the process. She looked back at the golem and to her surprise, see that the other arm was slowly regenerating.

While the regeneration rate wasn't on par with Ravagers, regeneration is still a troublesome factor. But then Louise realised something, in that split second, her cybernetic mind scoured through her past and foggy memories, back when she was still the naïve and arrogant Louise. In this particular memory, she remembered vaguely that golems aren't autonomous; the word 'self-preservation' doesn't exist in their vocabulary. So for it to simultaneously fight her while at the same time regrow back its missing limb tells Louise that something is wrong. Right now though, it's not the time to think about what's wrong with such a statement, she needed to end this fight as soon as possible.

And she had just thought of a nasty way of dealing with it.

With a plan set in motion, Louise flew towards the golem. The nanites followed her orders and started to spread out. While the composition of her body decreased, the black 'mist' which surrounded the golem started to get thicker and thicker. At this point Louise's body had became tranlucent, her pink core was exposed but the golem was completely swallowed by the cloud of nanites. She raised her translucent hand and balled it up to a fist.

The nanites which were surrounding the golem closed in on it, seeping through the cracks and embedding themselves deep in. Using her thermal vision, she could see all of the nanites from both inside and outside of the golem. Finally sure that the nanites are completely dug in she gave the command to vibrate violently.

The golem started to glow a bright orange from the heat of all of the vibrating. Louise watched with a sadistic grin as the golem tried its best to walk towards her and deliver another punch but sadly that was not meant to be. Before it could even take its third step, the heat that the nanites are producing had already past the melting point of the golem's earthly coposition. The first limbs to give were the arms followed by the legs. Louise watched as the golem slowly melted away. Once she was sure that it was pretty much impossible to get back up, she gave the command to stop and another command to gather back to her.

Lesser than thirty seconds later, her body was back to the way it was. Once that was done, she activated her thermal vision and checked the molten rubble for anything. A manic grin came upon her face.

She was out of breath, she was tired and her whole body was covered in burns. She wanted to stop and take a break but she knew that if she stopped, she would surely die. That monster destroyed her golem as if it was nothing. She had initially thought that hiding in the golem would've been a good idea.

How wrong she had been

If she had noticed it a moment later, she was sure that part of that rubble would've been warped with her own self. The cloak that she wore these past days was burnt beyond recognition, the cold air of the night licked her third degree burns which further brought more pain. Nevertheless, she continued to run. Carrying along with her was the case that she stole.

"This blasted thing better be damned well worth it!" she thought.

She took another step before she noticed something odd happening; gravity overtook. She wondered if she had tripped over an outlying root or something but then she realised that she didn't feel her feet catch anything. Her vision then rolled as she saw the two moons then the dirt repeatedly before being abruptly stopped by something that hit the back of her head. Because of that something stopping her momentum, she was able to see her headless body on the ground, the area where she had been decapitated had been cauterised.

"Nice try," a voice said.

At this point, Death finally knocked on her proverbial doorstep and told her that it was time.

A/N: I have semi-returned! On a more serious note, I sincerely apologise for the long wait. Things are still hectic and college isn't giving me any leeway to make some stories. Now, before some of you complain and say that this statement is a lie because I've been suspiciously active on the new story that I've posted called 'Terraria: Remnant Mod'. Let me just say that writing that story is relatively easier compared to writing 'Zero'.

Chapters only have 1,000 - 1,500 words at best hence why the posting of chapters is pretty fast. Another thing to note is how I harder it is for me to make something up from 'Zero' since the crossover that I'm making is a world that I have created on my own. Meanwhile for 'Terraria: Remnant Mod' the crossover consists of two things that I had known and I could easily make up a scenarion since I pretty much have all of the puzzle pieces.

Unfortunately, I still cannot come up with an update schedule. I will work on that soon enough, don't worry. So up until now, this is merely a surprise chapter. I cannot guarantee the when the next chapter will come.

With that being said. What do you think of the ending? Does the story feel rushed? Did I miss anything? Was Louise's decision to take on Fouquet alone the right thing to do? Please keep in mind that it has been a while since I wrote on this story so I am a little rusty. As always, constructive criticism is appreciated.

With all of that being said, time to read your reviews!

Lucian Naruto: Perhaps another ulterior motive that Louise had when taking on Fouquet on her own was to prevent Kirche from experiencing another traumatic experience even though Kirche knows that in this chapter, killing is pretty much a must.

Arc-Angel-Of-Fire: I am terribly sorry for that last chapter. At the time all I thought about was 'I have to post this chapter before college starts'. But I hope that this chapter fixes that problem as I had made sure to include a reasonable stop to end.

Mike: I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news but 'A Displaced Jason' has been put on hiatus for a very long time now. I don't even think that I might continue that story since I have completely lost interest on it.

With all of that said, I bid you all adieu!

Peace~