Chapter 376: Strength in Numbers…
Night.
When the sun goes down, and the moon and stars come out to play, people tend to disappear into their respective abodes.
They sleep it away in preparations for the dawn, or stay indoors where it’s warm while gazing at the darkened sky, but all the same, they tend to ignore the comings and going of those that go bump in the night. Granted, many who do move about in the night tend to do so swiftly and quietly.
Tap, tap, tap.
Upon the rooftops of Pearl Tusk Harbor, figures cloaked in black, donning masks of a deeply shaded blue leaped from place to place, out of sight and out of mind for a majority of folks, save some savvy few who didn’t wish to attract unnecessary attention.
These nimble warriors in black were known as simply “shadows”, the lot of them served as the main intelligence/assassination units of an international organization to which one “Fia” Venus reported to.
Normally, these “shadows” would remain inactive, spend their days spying on their assigned targets and doing nothing until ordered otherwise, perhaps spend time in deep cover. It was very rare for them to gather if ever for any reason…except for one very specific instance.
When a shadow is compromised.
In the event one of their own is caught, it is the duty of every shadow in the area to drop whatever their current assignment was and reclaim their fellow shadow.
Whether or not such situation end in bloodshed tend to vary from instance to instance, but they always end with the shadows reclaiming one of their own.
Be it in life or in death.
Woe to be the one who catches the attention of the shadows, for they shall be swallowed into darkness.
Of course…these fleeting phantoms of the night, never had the (mis)fortune of meeting true denizens of darkness…
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[Frog Big Sis, I have secured the girl.]
[Excellent work Spring, I’m amazed this bitch didn’t even notice.]
[You did make a pretty big distraction.]
[Fair point…wonder how she’ll react when she realizes she just lost her one and only possible bargaining tool?]
[Imma…guess…badly…]
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‘I need a distraction, but what?,’ Fia thought to herself as she kept a close eye on the encroaching demon child calling itself “Geo”. Fia hadn’t attempted to look away from Geo the moment they had started walking, in fear that if she attempted to divert her attention from this demon for even a moment, they would come barreling down on them like a hammer from the heavens.
‘I need to figure out this kid’s weakpoint. Everyone in the world has something.’
She was fairly certain she had seen this boy’s name and face somewhere before, but she and her organization had set up over a dozen of orphanages hosting hundreds of children, there was no way she could remember every single little-
‘Wait…that’s it!’
Before the demons could step closer, Fia suddenly flared up her aether to the peak of a Grand Master and pointed her hand like a blade downward and behind her.
“One more step and I’ll blast this girl into oblivion!,” Fia threatened.
The monsters stopped in their tracks the moment Fia’s threat rang out.
“You’re here to take her back, right?,” Fia asked, remembering Geo’s little sob story, “If y’all don’t step back right the fuck now, I don’t care about any potential profits, I will make it as if this troublesome child was never-.”
“Pfft-BAHAHAHAHA!”
“Crahahahaha!”
“PAOOOOO!”
“Scraaahahahahhalh!”
“What the fuck are they doing?,” Graff asked in the a panicked tone.
“I…I think they’re laughing?,” Simos answered.
Anger briefly washed over Fianas the sound of the monsters’ laughter tickled her ears. DD they seriously doubt her resolve to follow through her decision?
As it would turn out…no.
“Are you seriously mocking me as I hold your precious sister’s life in my hands?!”
“Behahaha! No, silly girl!,’ Geo laughed, “we’re laughing at you not realizing that she’s no longer in your grasp!”
“What?!”
Fia immediately released the aether building up in her arm and finally looked at that immediate area around her…only to find that the little girl, who was the reason why this conflict occurred in the first place, had suddenly upped and disappeared.
Fia had initially believed that one of the idiots who sold her to her in the first place had decided to concede the girl to one of the three monsters in order to save their own skin, but the looks of equally confused faces being shared between the three of them told her that this wasn’t the case.
“How the fuck did you-wait…”
Just as Fia was about to ask when and how these demons managed to spirit away the girl from her grasp, her gaze settled upon the slumped over shadow that was embedded in the wall behind her.
The gears in her head began to turn, as she realized what had happened.
“You…”
“Oh ho? Finally realizing I didn’t have to be so loud and flashy when I iced your little minion over there?,” Geo mocked with a manic smile. Fia wasn’t entirely sure, but she swore the boy had suddenly grew taller as he mocked her.
“That’s the funny thing about the perception of you humans, all it takes is a loud noise and some frantic movement, and suddenly, bam!,” Geo emphasized with a snap of his fingers, causing sparks to fly, “everything you own is suddenly taken away.”
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[Cacophonous Knuckle!]
BOOM!
“FUCKING SHIT!”
[Looks like, I’m up!]
In the exact moment Jasper launched Fia’s shadow flying into a nearby wall with his organs getting scrambled, Spring Brawler stretched out one of his arms from his own hiding place on the roof of the warehouse.
Well…launched it from a skylight he had lifted open a couple minutes earlier to this moment.
As the trafficker and the kidnappers turned their attention away from Janice and towards the decidedly mortally wounded shadow, Spring Brawler scooped the unconcious girl and her kitten off the floor with an aether coated hand and pulled them out of the warehouse like she was a toy in a crane game.
Except this crane game had a one hundred percent win rate.
[Save the girl. Save the world. How humanitarian…wait… wouldn’t it be kaijintarian since we’re the ones doing the rescuing?]
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Sproing!
“Another demon puppet?!”
“Huh…at least it looks…less menacing than the other ones?”
“You say that, but the unnaturally red glowing eyes look like they’re full of rage and hate towards us.”
“…fair enough.”
From the shadows above entered yet another demon, a puppet one like the ballerina made of blades facing Victor.
This particular puppet however had a distinctly different design from the ballerina, with literal springs for its arms and legs, a face that was distinctively more featureless and hands and feet that ended in weights shaped after the limbs they were supposed to mimic.
Unusually though, the hand-shaped weights were as mobile as actual hands. Cradled in the springy demon’s arms was a child-shaped bundle wrapped in cloth.
From the way Geo was looking at the cloth with an obviously affectionate look in his eyes, Fia could assume that this bundle was none other than the little girl who had been so callously stolen from her.
A couple minutes passed before Geo affectionately patted the bundle and made a motion for the spring-like demon to leave the area, a command to which the latter simply nodded in agreement before doing just that.
“Well, with any possibility of you abusing a hostage to try and weasel your way out of a justified punishment now out of the way, are you ready to pay for your sins?”
As soon as Geo finished asking that question, the air around him suddenly became electrically charge.
[Armor on]
The aether around him suddenly condensed into forming a distinctive looking blue and purple aether armor that seemed to depict a variety of animals patterned into it, but the most prominent one being a giant frog’s head right in the torso.
As Fia watched a fucking nine year old activate [Aether Armor], a deep feeling of rage welled inside for the first time in a long time.
“You know…in all of my years, doing what I do, I believe this is the first time I’ve ever been so thoroughly insulted,” Fia began to say, “but…do you want to know why it took so long for someone to actually insult me in this way?”
“Because of your charming personality making it so no one wanted to be around you anyways?,” Geo asked with a sweet yet sarcastic voice.
“No,” Fia curtly replied as she stared at the hateful youth before her in the eyes, “it’s because they were afraid of the forces I wield.”
Crash!
“Whoa!”
“That’s a lot of shadows!”
On perfect cue, several squads worth of people all dressed in black robes and blue featureless masks, broke through the windows or appeared from the shadows like fish leaping from the water.
As they appeared, they quickly drew weapons as if out of nowhere and proceeded to surround the monsters that had originally surrounded Fia.
Thoroughly buoyed by the sight of her minions, Fia mood shifted from insulted rage to raging arrogance.
“Now then, little demon, are you ready to pay for your sins against me?”
