Warning: Cliffy. Death. Gore. All that wonderful stuff.
Desperate Measures
Eve watched the battle from the air, a pair of angel wings sprouting from her back. She was vaguely aware of blood spurting everywhere, and the sounds of tortured screams swirling like a powerful whirlwind around the dining room. She had only eyes for Train, who stood still in the middle of chaos, a dark shadow next to Creed. As if aware of her stare, Train turned his eyes upward, nostrils flaring slightly, as if he could catch the very scent of her.
Suddenly, his head turned toward her, and his eyes locked on hers, narrowing into glowing slits. Those golden orbs seemed to cast an eerie light of their own, casting ominous shadows across his smooth marble face.
She reminisced about the time he broke into Torneo's mansion to save her, his eyes with the exact same expression. But, she realized, the confident smirk was gone, and all that was left in its place was deep, cold darkness. Her wings shuddered at the very thought, and she lost altitude.
At that very moment, Train disappeared before her eyes. Eve's eyes opened wide, not in surprise, but in an adrenaline rush as she rushed to make her nanomachines transform her hair into steel. Just as the brief fire of transformation happened, she felt a heavy pressure on that region, and realized it was a bullet, caught by her strands of spiraling, steel hair.
She turned around, but all she could see was empty air. A dark pulse from the side, and she folded her wings and dived, just in time to miss another bullet. As she dived, she twisted around, wanting to catch a glimpse of Train, despite being in the middle of battle. There was no one there.
Another pulse of aura, another dodge. Pulse, dodge. Pulse, dodge. Not once did she catch sight of Train, not even a flicker of hair or the trails of his coat. Nothing but that bastard Creed's face laughing freely as he watched in amusement while he scattered the blood of his opponents with his imagine blade in a gracious spin on one foot.
Tears of exhaustion and frustration clouded her vision as sweat ran down her face and dirtied dress. Her wings were ragged from too much flying and dodging, and her shoulder's protested another minute of holding her weight up in the air.
If I survive this, I am definitely going on diet.
Sven floated in his quiet world, not asleep, but not awake either. No, he would never be awake in the human sense ever again. He had lost his sight, his hearing, and nearly his mind in the cold darkness the crept and ate through his life, casting his hopes into bottomless pits, until there was no light, no light at all..
He screamed, oh how he had screamed. But no one had responded. Sometimes he would feel a hand over his, and he would grip it tightly, not wanting to loose this only anchor he had in this lonesome world. And he would feel hot wet tears splatter on his cheeks, the rough lace brushing against his neck, the sweep of silken hair across his cheeks, and the familiar scent of peaches.
One day, he dreamed of Train.
The back of the Black Cat's head, dark hair framed strikingly against a blood red moon. They stood on the windy roof of the skyscraper; the one Train had told him that Saya had claimed for her star gazing. Take care of Eve, Train had said, tossing back his hair to reveal demon eyes, and a cold smile. Creed's laughter rang across the cityscape, as Train jumped off the roof, hands spread carried off by the cold wind, into the darkness and the mad laughter.
He had stopped his screams and he refused to touch the small hands afterwards. He knew it was Eve, the one who soothed his burning blind eyes with her tears everyday, who let his grip turn vise-like around her fragile wrist. Had he not promised to take care of her and show her a carefree world aside from killing? What would Train think of him, being so weak, screaming like a girl in bed?
It took him a week, a week of silence and painful deliberation within himself, as his darkness whispered for him to give up such a hopeless struggle. He slowly opened his foreseeing eye, forcing it open until pain wracked his head, traveled through his body. His eyes watered and begged to be closed, his mind strained tightly within its confines, the link to the foreseeing eye trembling dangerously. And still he did not give up, enduring painful minute by minute, knowing that if he failed, his precarious link to his foreseeing eye would collapse, and even this form of seeing would be lost to him.
And in the ended he turned into a man who walked the world forever in a dream of possible futures, who would never know the actual past, but must piece together the present from his visions of the future.
He dreamed of Train lost in Creed's perception of the past. Sven knew that he had to show Train of the brightness in his future, before he was lost forever. Desperation welled up in his heart, a feeling he had forbidden himself to feel ever since he decided to stop mourning the loss of his sight. The feeling sped his body like poison, traveling up his arms and….
He felt the chains around his wrists rust, crack, and then turn into dust.
Green walked into the ballroom with a bottle of champagne in one hand, and the a stolen identity on his face. He felt the immediate change in the atmosphere as he stepped over the dead mutilated bodies of his comrades. The gravity here was 10 times that of normal, and the wine bottle weighed like Number I sword. As he got closer to Creed, it steadily increased. At the center of this heaviness was Maro, his hands outstretched, his two feet spread out widely on the ground giving under his weight, his torso leaning forward, and his face red from concentrating Tao as he slowly squashed some weaker Sweepers under their own weight. With his Victorian style coat and lace, however, he looked like a frilly constipated blob. Green struggled not to laugh, and picked up his pace with an overly solemn face.
He shifted uncomfortably in his waiter garb before he paused behind Creed, and poured champagne into the glass in the hand of Creed, who otherwise seemed unawares, still laughing at the Eve's furious battle with Number XIII in the sky. Dark streaks flashed by her as she dove and turned, but no matter how great her aerial maneuvering was, the flashes got faster and faster, following her with flawless consistency. Suddenly, a pale hand shot into Green's view, and he quickly handed the glass to Creed.
"Is it not grand?" Creed asked, half to himself in amusement. "This Eve is a beautiful machine. Look how she dances without any restraint; she does not even notice the gravity pressing upon her, so concentrated she is!"
Green silently poured Creed more champagne, while watching Eve all the while out of the corner of his eyes. Train was slowly torturing her, his movements faster and faster, his bullets biting into her skin a little before she responded in blocking. But he never aimed at anything to vital without a slight pause for Eve to catch up and notice. He was playing with her, like a cat batting at a mouse trapped between its paws.
"CREED YOU BASTARD!!!!" A flash a gold caught Green's eyes, and a whip came flailing at Creed, barbed with dark thorns dripping with poison. Creed sidestepped gracefully, eyes still on the dark flashes of Train. Green swore silently at his blonde partner, dodging the whip with less grace than he could manage. He frowned mentally, sure that he had assigned the mellow-natured Kevin to calm this hot headed woman.
"DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?!!! I'M FRIDA, THE LAST SURVIVING MEMBER OF THE CASTRO ROYAL LI—"
"I do apologize," Creed interrupted, a dangerous tone poisoning his sweet voice, "but you are interrupting the show Train is putting on for me. Would you mind terribly to just skew yourself on my sword? I'm a bit too preoccupied to do it myself, I'm afraid."
Frida sputtered, and drew back her whip and slashed. Surprisingly, it slit Creed's right cheek, and a thin trail of black blood appeared. The darkness spread across his cheek at an alarmingly rapid rate, but Creed did not notice. His sword leveled up immediately, his annoyance clear in his cold glinting eyes.
Frida drew back her whip again. She paused mid way, and then gurgled, split cleanly and perfectly in half from head to toe. No blood flowed, and for a disgusting second, Green could see a section of her organs, heart still beating in half her body, laid out in front of him like an anatomy drawing. Creed walked over, and stepped on half her skull, and it burst into bloody gore.
Quietly, Green offered Creed a towel to clean the blood from his cheeks, but could offer no help with the gore splattered all over his pristine blue and white costume.
Then he pulled out his sword in smooth swiftness and beheaded Creed in one sweep.