Age of Darkness (34 page)

Keimaro stood there for a moment and
exhaled. “That was something,” he said to himself. Suddenly, he felt all of his
hatred toward Faar being drained in a single instant. For once, he felt happy.
A ball to look forward to with a princess that he’d come to love, a
well-respected position in the Royal Guard, people who respected and treated
him equally, everything seemed perfect. He almost completely forgot why he had
even come to Bassada in the first place. But he knew, in the end, he couldn’t
escape his duty. He would have to assassinate the king still, despite his
hospitality. However, for the boy, there was no time to sulk. In an instant, a
group of tailors swept him away into another room to fit him for the night’s
ball. For once, Keimaro allowed his plan for revenge to be pushed away from his
mind.

***

As Yata walked into the infirmary, he
couldn’t help but stare at the liveliness of the girl that sat back in the bed,
propped up against her pillow. She looked at them as if they were foreign
creatures. She blinked a few times to register the fact that she was seeing
people. Her eyes reminded Yata of Keimaro’s, except they glowed a constant red.
Another person with the Shokugan; now this was something that one didn’t
typically see.

“Has she spoken yet?” Gavin asked Z, who
shook his head.

“She doesn’t seem to like talking.”

“Maybe she’s a mute,” Buu cut in.

“I doubt it,” Gavin muttered as they all
stopped at the foot of her bed. “Hey, uh….” The soldier scratched his neck,
quite unsure what to say in the awkward situation. “So, we were just wondering
about how you got into that test lab underground. Do you remember anything?”

The girl said nothing.

“Guess she is a mute,” Buu remarked.

“Shut up,” Gavin sighed.

“What’s your name?” Yata asked suddenly.

Everyone was silent as the girl looked up
at Yata, brushing her long, black hair from her eyes. Her face seemed fuller,
and her body had recovered a small amount from being fed over the past couple
days. Nevertheless, she still looked extremely weak and skinny. “Eve.”

“Eve?” Buu said. “Never heard of that name
before. That from the north?”

“And how did you come to get those eyes of
yours?” Yata asked, giving her a reassuring nod. “Don’t worry; we won’t hurt
you.”

***

Eve felt overwhelmed with all of these men
staring at her as if she were some type of specimen. She would’ve lifted her
arm if she could to try and at least get up, but she truly didn’t have the
energy to do it. Not to mention the fact that she hardly remembered anything
prior to being tested on by the government.
I suppose that’s all they want
to know anyway.

She leaned back into the comfortable pillow
and sighed with pleasure, not able to remember a time when she had been this
comfortable or well-fed—not that she could remember much at all. The people who
had performed tests on her had always taken it upon themselves to make her fast
quite often or starve her simply to see what would happen. Perhaps it was that,
or maybe they didn’t want to spare food for mere test experiments.

And these eyes. Oh, she remembered how she
had gotten them. The procedure was excruciating, and she remembered that she
had been blind for several days. Someone had used an odd type of magic in order
to make this all possible. “I got these eyes from transplants that they gave
me.”

“They? You mean the government?” the boy
with flowing brown hair said.

“Yata, who else would it be?”

“Someone else,” a voice echoed through the
infirmary. Everyone turned to see a rather dashing blonde-haired boy walking
into the room. He wore a fancy blue silk shirt with tight red pants. He tossed
his hair as he walked forward, and Eve saw that one of his eyes was actually
scarred with a long slash across it. “I have reason to believe that the
government wasn’t actually involved in this little underground project of
theirs.”

“Aladdin?” Yata said. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I searched through their
database of files, and I found no papers that regarded any underground
experimentations at all. It seems as if the king isn’t even aware of these test
experiments occurring,” Aladdin said. “That is why I believe that the Bount
organization has something to do with this. Noah’s whereabouts are unknown
because, unlike Lena, he wasn’t brought to the royal prison.”

“What? He wasn’t?”

“No,” Aladdin said. “Whoever caught him is
outside of the law. Even if he were executed, it would’ve been recorded. But
there was nothing, not even a single mention that he had been captured in the
first place. That means that another group is pulling a secretive side-job, and
there’s an undercover group in the government—a small handful of people who are
secretly pulling behind-the-scene tests on humans. That’s why I’m here,
actually. Yata, Gavin, I wanted to ask both of you … who was that person that
you saw underground? What was his name?”

Yata blinked a few times, deep in thought.
It was difficult for him to remember such a specific name. It was some type of
a general, wasn’t it?

“General Mundo,” Eve heard the soldier,
Gavin, say. “I remember it was him. I served under him.”

Aladdin smacked his forehead with a groan. “General
Mundo is a spy? That’s not good! Keimaro works extremely closely with General
Mundo. If Mundo really is with the Bount organization, then he’s going to be
easily able to wipe Keimaro out and take the key.”

“But he wouldn’t risk that!” Yata
exclaimed. “What if Keimaro didn’t have the key on him? General Mundo would’ve
killed Keimaro without being able to find out where the key was, if that was
his objective all along. Which means….”

“They’ll search his room first.”

***

Yata and all of his companions burst from
the infirmary, leaving Buu and Z behind as they sprinted for Keimaro’s room.

“Crap! If Mundo knows the location of this mansion,
then everything is going to go to hell! And if they have Noah, they might be
able to extract the information using some type of magic. We have to assume
that they know where Z’s mansion is!” Aladdin exclaimed as they dashed down the
hallway, throwing Keimaro’s door open.

The room was completely trashed with
everything knocked over and torn apart. The bed itself had been ripped open,
and the mattress was tossed across the room. The pillows were slashed open with
their stuffing pouring out onto the floor. Keimaro’s cloak had been tossed to
the ground, and his wardrobe had been ransacked. In the center of the room was
Noah, who glanced at them over his shoulder. He wore the black cloak of the
Bounts, and his eyes were empty, completely deprived of color and emotion.

“Noah?” Gavin blinked.

Yata’s body immediately solidified, knowing
what would happen next. A huge green fist that had been conjured out of the air
rocketed forward and slammed into him, sending him flying across the hallway
and ramming into the railing, almost falling off of the tower floor. He
groaned, noticing he had completely bent the railing, which creaked when he got
off of it.

“Noah! What the hell are you doing?”
Aladdin yelled as he was smacked backward by a wall of blue energy conjured by
Noah. The noble slammed into the ground and rolled, grunting.

“Guys, something’s different about him,”
Gavin said, unsheathing his steel sword and brandishing it in front of him. He
tensed up, taking battle positioning. “Look at his eyes!”

Noah walked out of Keimaro’s room and
flicked his wrist once more. In an instant, three things happened. A fist flew
out and smashed into Yata once more, sending him flying off of the railing and
out into open air, prepared to fall about fifty stories to the ground below. A
blue rifle appeared in Noah’s hand aimed at Aladdin. Noah fired, burying a
conjured bullet into the noble’s shoulder. A red blade materialized in Noah’s other
hand. In an instant, Noah’s gun vanished, and he gripped the hilt of his sword
with both hands, rushing at Gavin with his blade in the air.

Yata’s heart was thumping rapidly as he
clutched out at open air, not particularly fearing death but the pain that
would follow when he smashed into the ground. Sure enough, when he hit the floor,
the entire world seemed to spin in an abrupt turn, leaving ringing in his ears.
“Ugh…,” he muttered, leaning forward and rubbing his metallic head. “That
freaking hurt, you four-eyed bastard,” he growled and turned to see that many
of the assassins were staring at him while others looked up at the burst of
light appearing on the top floor as Noah engaged in battle.

“Evacuate the mansion!” Yata yelled to one
of the assassins. “Spread the word, everyone!” he said, gripping his bat and
turning to look up.

Noah had knocked Gavin to the side and
leapt off of the large platform above. He fell down into open air, sweeping his
hands outward. A conjured blue substance appeared in the air below him,
creating some type of liquid. His body dropped into the liquid, slowing his
fall. He slipped through layers of conjured fluid until he landed before Yata,
slowly rising to his feet. The magical conjured substance vanished as soon as
he was done using it. He adjusted his glasses with a single poke to the lenses
and glanced at Yata.

This magic of his is really something.
Being able to create anything that he wants out of thin air,
Yata thought and smiled. His last fight against Yuri had been a
loss. This time, he would go all out and show his opponent that he was not to
be messed with.

“You really have pissed me off, four-eyes,”
Yata growled, his right arm changing from its original metal to diamond. “Maybe
a good whack to the head will bring you to your senses, Noah.”

Noah raised an eyebrow and held out his
hand, a massive green hammer materializing in his palm. He held his weapon
outward and frowned. “You guys seem to know me. Who are you?”

Yata blinked a few times.
He doesn’t remember
me. What did those Bounts do to him?

Noah grunted, dashing for the door to the
mansion in a desperate attempt to flee. Yata intercepted him by swiftly
stepping in his path. “I’ll admit that your magic truly is something to be proud
of, Noah, but my magic counters yours. You won’t be able to hurt me when I’m in
this form,” he said, nodding to his diamond skin. “Now, I’m going to beat the
crap out of you until you’re ready to wake the hell up!”

Yata shot forward, swinging his metal bat
at Noah. His bat slammed against Noah’s hammer with a loud bang, echoing
through the mansion as assassins evacuated around them. Whoever had sent Noah
would surely arrive with backup soon. He had to finish this up quickly. If the
Bounts were coming, they could wipe out all of these assassins around him in an
instant. He rotated his body and swung with his diamond arm, launching a hard
punch at Noah from the side.

Noah released his hammer, which vanished,
and took a step back in response. He held up both of his hands so that a giant
green wall appeared between Yata and him. Yata’s diamond fist smashed into the
wall and shattered it instantly, sending glittering green shards raining down
around them. Noah flew back and hit the ground, sliding across the marble
floor, grunting. He gripped his ribs, his bones aching from Yata’s heavy blow.
Even with the shield, the diamond was hard enough to smash through it and land a
devastating blow.

Yata pumped his diamond arm, exhilarated
with the heat of battle. A grin spread across his face as he straightened his
back and clenched his fist tightly. This was only the beginning! It was about
time he got some action. He began to advance when he saw a slight shimmer in
the air in front of him. His heart thumped, and he raised his arms in defense,
knowing that something was coming.

A man appeared from nowhere, teleporting in
front of him with hardly even a sound. His spiked black hair came down over his
red eyes, and Yata immediately recognized him. Tobimaru Hayashi. The Bount
rotated his body, his black cloak flapping in the air as he drove a heavy kick
into Yata’s diaphragm. A burst of force emitted from the sole of his foot and
ejected into Yata’s stomach, sending the diamond body soaring through the air before
slamming heavily into the ground.

Tobimaru slowly lowered his leg from the
kick and brushed the hair from his eyes to glance at Yata as if the boy wasn’t
even worth his time. “You’re still alive, huh?” he said with a scoff, his hands
lowered at his side as he glanced around. “So, where’s Keimaro? I have a fight
to settle with him.”

Yata rubbed his dented stomach and
chuckled, pushing himself to his feet. “You sure are strong, Tobimaru,” he
snarled, swaying lightly as burning rage coursed through his veins. For once,
he knew what it was like to be in Keimaro’s shoes, completely filled with
hatred. “Keimaro isn’t here right now. But I’ll stand in his place, if that’s
all right.”

This is the guy who destroyed our city,
killed our friends, and obliterated everything that I’d ever known. Sure, I
hated the place, but that gives no one the right to take away the lives of
everyone that I’d ever loved. Fourteen years of my life, wiped in a single
hour.
Yata’s eyes began to morph into gems, his
eyes gleaming like two sapphires. His entire body also transformed into
glittering diamond to match his right arm, until he was a living statue of gem.
“I’ll kill you for what you did.”

Tobimaru raised an eyebrow and gave a small
smile, raising his hand. His blade unsheathed itself and floated in the air in
front of him. The Bount grasped the hilt of his weapon, his eyes shining like
two burning coals. “It seems that you have indeed changed over the years. This
will be a memorable battle,” he said and sighed, “but do you honestly think
that you’ll be able to handle me alone?”

“He’s not alone,” Buu said, suddenly
appearing in front of Tobimaru, rotating his body into a rocketing punch. His
gleaming brass knuckles flashed in the air as he swung out at Tobimaru, who
tilted his head in a reactive dodge. The boy vanished and reappeared beside
Yata, adjusting the metal on his fists with a small smile. “Don’t forget that
this is also my battle to fight,” he growled, brushing the hair out of his
eyes. “That was my village you screwed over four years ago, Bount. I’ll see to
it that you’re killed. I’ve trained hard for these four years. I’ve cast away
my own humanity to use this magic so that I could beat you terrorists to a pulp!”