Scarlet 3

Scarlet 3

…

Commissioned by Citino

Word Count: 2604

…

How was I found? Some might say sheer coincidence is a possibility. However, I did not survive Bet without a cultivating and pruning my personal paranoia. The Fallen had identified me, found me, and attempted to kill me mere days ago. Not only that, but they knew I’d possessed a Sacred Gear. The fact that they hadn’t known which was the only silver lining I was willing to acknowledge. 

According to Ddraig, the Grigori is a supernatural superpower. While Heaven was thoroughly rebuffed in the last War between the Three Factions, and Hell rose to power, the Grigori picked their battles, lost what they could afford, and won what they could with overwhelming might. Some would call them cowards. I say that they’re the most dangerous, and powerful, of the Three Factions, even without God or Super Devils on their side. 

They had information gathering abilities. 

They knew how to use that information. 

They did so against Hell and Heaven. 

Against God.

Against Lucifer. 

And, now, they’re still considered weak. 

I would have killed for the Grigori’s position in Bet. 

Therefore, I couldn’t take any risks. 

“Argento, did you know who those were?” I needed facts now. I disregarded everything I’d been told by the girl before me. Her features were simply a series of elements I trawled for dishonesty. The slightness of her frame was a weakness that could utilize. Those long, golden tresses of hers were now an easy lever to grab and gain the advantage in combat. “Don’t lie.”

I’d been found by the Fallen mere days after I’d killed one of their own. Today, I’d helped a strange stranger around and about. One dressed as a nun, who seemed innocent and incapable of violence, and required help. I would have considered her as their target, that I’d been merely lucky to save her, but the Fallen had referred to me by name. They had attacked with the express intention of killing me.

The only reason that Asia Argento wasn’t dead was because that attack would have killed her too.

“T-they were F-fallen, Hyoudou-kun… and you have a Sacred Gear just like me! A s-strong one!” I expected fear from my tone, and the fact that I loomed over her in the dark sewers, away from the sight of others. Considering my height, and, perhaps, the fact I’d obliterated a woman’s head with a throwing hammer, Argento’s voice should’ve been filled with fear. Instead, I received a measure of awe and gratitude. “T-this must be God’s will! I’ve been searching for h-help for so long! I-I even came here, when I was called, b-but they never came!”

While my current looks and actions definitely weren’t up to par with being Alexandria’s killer, and being wreathed in hundreds and thousands of bugs, I liked to think I was fairly intimidating. Intimidation is a good tool. One that can be applied to many, many circumstances. Not being able to intimidate someone is unacceptable. 

I was tempted to dash away Argento’s wild, rampant assumptions, perhaps with a solid strike to the face, but Ddraig’s warning came.

We’re not alone down here, anymore, Taylor.

Taylor. That was the name I was nearly always called during battle. While I insisted on being Issei Hyoudou outside of combat, being called Taylor during and after times of danger was necessary. My new body’s experiences and memories fade away with the name. It makes fighting easier. Disposal, too. There were urges that came with my new body, my damned libido among them, that I preferred suppressed during combat. Being called Taylor, by someone I trusted and spoke right into my head, helped with that. 

Please, don’t compare me to a girl your hand ought to be named for, Taylor. 

I was able to ignore that dig, see.

Still, given the impending danger and Argento’s yet-to-be-verified story, I had to make a call. My experience, from my past life, told me that Argento was telling the truth. However, intuition is nothing without verification. She remained a possible threat. However, there remained the possibility that she wasn’t.

Killing her, or leaving her to die to the Fallen, wasn’t acceptable, if she wasn’t a threat to me.

Killing her, or leaving her to die to the Fallen, was acceptable if she was a threat. 

Having little to no information was a terrible thing.

Whatever you want to do, Taylor, just decide quickly. These two aren’t fooling around, anymore.

Fine.

“I don’t know about God’s will, but I’ll keep you safe ,if you tell me what your Sacred Gear is.” If Argento declined, that would a point against her. However, if she complied with my demand, I gained two things: information about her and a potential asset. If Argento told me what she had at her disposal, and aided me with whatever she had, that would be several points in her favor. Enough for me to not consider using her as a distraction, or cutting her loose, if the situation didn’t go in my favor. “We might need it.”

“Ah, of course! My Sacred Gear’s name is Twilight Healing.” 

Just like that, with just two words, my situation shattered into a thousand tiny pieces.

Taylor.

Only Ddraig’s words managed to snap me out of the fugue of memories, probabilities, and strategies that unfolded in my brain, and allowed me to ask a more important question.

“How much?”

“Hyoudou-san?”

“How much can you heal, Argento?”

“A-as long as someone isn’t dead I can bring them back—

“How long.”

“A f-few minutes?” 

That was all I needed to hear. 

“Hyoudou-san? A-are you planning something?”

I ignored her.

Healing magic is real. Though, Ddraig knew little of it, he knew it existed. Dragons had little use for it, but he noticed those who he fought returning whole and hale after being burnt a crisp, sometimes. Healing magic of that scale, capable of turning a mass of third-degree burns into a combatant capable of fighting against a dragon, was an immense asset, even if it took days, or months, to achieve. Still, as with all forms of magic, those capable of such feats were specialists, and stayed far away from the front.

“Hyoudou-san? …W-what-…ar—planning?”

Argento had a Sacred Gear specializing on healing that could be used to bring someone back from the brink of death in a matter of minutes. That’s centuries of work, effort, and training ignored, placed within a human with a natural aptitude for the work itself by God. On Bet, the only one who could compare would be Panacea, yet she was potential danger. Remove that danger, leave only the healing abilities behind, and you have an asset that can tip the balance of power in favor of whoever had her, regardless of her own wants and desires. Finally, given her disposition and abilities, no one sane would attempt to use her as a double-agent, meaning that she was indeed lost, alone, and lacking in affiliation. 

“…Hyou…”

Even if the Fallen were chasing me, I couldn’t allow her to fall into their hands. 

There was only one option available to me, then.

“Argento, I need you to listen to me very, very carefully.” Taking hold of Argento, I made sure she was looking only at me. She was in danger, but that wasn’t my main concern. No, my concern was keeping her from being identified, found, and taken. I had thousands of questions that I needed answered, but the situation wasn’t going to allow me to ask them. For now, I just needed to be sure of one thing. “I’ll keep you safe, but I need your help.”

Keeping her from falling into any of the Factions hands.

By any means necessary.

…

Bet spoiled me for choice, with the criminal amounts of firepower and Tinker Tech available through cash and connections. While I had neither of the two in my current life, that was primarily because I had little use for them. Not only that, but my first line of defense was remaining unknown. While the prospect of having magical artifacts supplement my abilities was strong, and Ddraig approved of researching how Boosts would affect less mundane objects, the caveat of having to work within the supernatural world for funds, and then making connections to locate, haggle for, and procure the items in question was too high.

My advantages would have to remain within my reach as an ordinary human being, albeit one armed with a supernatural weapon proclaimed to be capable of killing a god, albeit in Brute flavor this time around, instead of a Master/Thinker combination. Though I essentially started from step one, having to relearn my new powers, my experience in my prior life provided me with some leeway. Several, hard-learned lessons remained with me, along with many strategies that were tried-and-true, and the ability to look at a situation objectively.

So, while I lacked the ability to procure explosives, firearms, and mono-molecular-edged knives, I made do with escape routes, planning ahead, and honing my new body to the extent of my abilities. Still, killing two Fallen without any weapons, in an escape route, and without the element of surprise was a bit too much. I was a Brute in the offensive sense. I lacked regeneration, staying power, and the ability to stay in battle. 

Unless I completely commited, held nothing back, and risked my life, that is. 

Every strategy I had was centered around guerilla warfare. Hit hard, hit fast, and never enter a prolonged conflict. In truth, that was how I’ve always fought, but this time I wasn’t able to use bugs as guided, living projectiles. Thus, it was more imperative I didn’t enter a slugging match. I needed to have the first, devastating blow. I needed to be able to retreat. Then, once in relative safety, I would plan another ambush, before repeating the cycle once more. 

While I enjoyed the advantages of being in a familiar battleground, and ensured my opponents didn’t enjoy their advantages of flight and speed, fighting two Fallen Angels head-on would be near-suicide, even if I had all my equipment at my disposal. Each one, even with the moniker of Fallen, was a being created by God to fight against Devils. According to Ddraig, they’re all Brutes, with dashes of Blaster and Mover, with a handful being able to scatter humans armies with ease. In essence, each one is a human-sized individual with the speed and firepower of an attack helicopter, along with the durability of a tank.

Facing two at once, both with the intent to kill, and perhaps willing to take blows in order to get a hit on me, was tantamount to suicide. 

However, with Argento at play, as long as I survived the encounter, I had little to lose.

Save for feeling tremendous amounts of pain, during and after, your fight.

Well, yes, except for that. 

Undoubtedly, the upcoming battle was going to involve me sustaining various injuries. Fighting against beings made for war, who both have extensive experience in combat, and with superior reflexes is guaranteed to result in such an outcome. I’d need to be ludicrously more powerful, in order to defeat two Fallen without any help. However, with Argento in play, any outcome where I remain alive after dealing a modicum of damage against my opponents, will be in my favor. Pain is a temporary, while victory was permanent.

Keep that in mind, and make sure not to die of shock, Taylor, because here they are.

I had two opponents. Both were Fallen, and, beyond their looks, I had no idea who they were. However, from their faces alone, I knew that there was no stalling this time around. I’d dispatched on of their allies with a single blow, some of her remained on the two of them, and each one immediately summoned weapons, which cast a bright light upon the long tunnel of the sewer. The larger Fallen took a step forward, brandishing a spear-shaped mass of solid, burning light in his hand, while the other took a step back and reared her weapon over her shoulder. In short, I was facing two well-trained combatants, one at a distance and the other in close quarters, who both intended to kill me as carefully as possible. 

One would keep me away, while the other turned me into a pincushion, or forced me into the other one’s path.

It was a tactic that relied on a cautious opponent, so it was naturally going to fail, given my current strategy.

Whilst the other one charge at me from one direction, as the other filled the space around him with projectiles, I surged forward, Sacred Gear braced before me, straight ahead.

A trained, Olympic sprinter athlete can cover ten meters in a single second. I can manage seven. Boosted by Ddraig, up to eight times given my current limits of only having three Boosts, that turns into a fifty-sex meters per second. The speed of sound is three hundred forty-forty meters a second, meaning I went from dead-still to two hundred kilometers per hour in an instant.

The distance between me and my farthest opponent was a little more than thirty meters in a straight line. 

Simple math dictates I can reach her in a little less than half a second. 

In that span of time, I receive a burning spear of light in both my abdomen and my left shoulder, the first from my long-range opponent, and the second from the one who’d come forward to hold me back. In half of a second, as I became nothing more than a moving blur to the eyes of an average human, I am given two mortal wounds by my two opponents, as they managed to not only see my movement, but force their bodies to move more quickly than I did, for a single action.

So, though my gauntleted fist caved in the smaller Fallen’s skull, I came out of the situation with one more wound than I expected to have.

I’d gone past my coming foe in a straight line, in the reach of his weapon, but that reaction time was beyond ludicrous. Being at the back, examining your opponent, and keeping track of them is a good excuse for being able to hit them when they manage to be a quarter of a bullet’s speed, but at melee range? Half  of a second after you see them charge? That reaction speed was beyond unfair. In fact, if each of the Fallen I’d fought had such an advantage, I wondered how I even managed to kill one of them.

That question, of course, was answered when, instead of simply stabbing me in the back of the head while I tried to stand, my opponent decided to walk in front of me.

“Any last words, human?”

Gross incompetence, I supposed, was a fair answer.

Even if it rankled me to know my victories were more due to my opponent’s incompetence, than my own strength.

Regardless, I elected against wasting any time considering it more than I needed to.

I answered his question with a swift, thrice-Boosted uppercut to his gonads, even as he drove a spear of light through my spine upon realizing my intent.

Two Fallen dead, at the cost of a burning hole in my left shoulder, through my abdomen, and my nape.

Just in time for my alarm to ring in the distance, to have Argento come to help me.

As far as plans yet, it was one of the worst I’d ever composed.

At least, it worked.