Chapter 9

Sunday 5/29/119 2:30 PM,

Riverdale St,

Walking down the middle of the carless road, Guzel’s eyes are full of vengeful hatred. Her every step pounds into the ground with a heavy aggressiveness. She is currently on a warpath in order to find Lyra’s killer, a man she only knows by ‘the bounty hunter.’

Dammit! I know the police station's around here somewhere. He's going to need to go back at some point. If I stake out there, I’ll eventually run into him. But where the hell is it?!

Rounding a corner, she kicks a can down the street with more force than necessary, causing it to roll a significant distance. As her eyes follow the can’s path, her gaze lands on a sign that reads ‘Barry’s Northern Restaurant.’

“Tch. They even have one out here in the middle of nowhere.”

As this random thought escapes her mouth, the door to the restaurant swings open, causing the little bell above the door to clank. Attracting her attention, her eyes widen in disbelief as Ethan and Chris exit the establishment.

The reason for her disbelief is the words which Jarvis had spoken earlier when she was told of Lyra’s death. Those words now flash through her mind.

“According to witnesses, the Bounty Hunter was about 5'8, wore a long coat and combat boots. He was estimated to be early to mid twenties, and had jet black hair with a white stripe on his bangs.”

This description perfectly matches one of the two men who just walked out of the restaurant. Realising her target is within sight, her face grows colder while tears slowly well up in her eyes. She clenches her fist with enough strength that her fingernails dig into her palm, causing her to draw blood. Before rushing in for the kill, she decides to trail her target in order to build her resolve.

Meanwhile, as they are leaving, Chris halts in his tracks and turns back towards the restaurant.

“WAIT!” he yells. “We are forgetting a very important step in eating out.”

“Don't worry. I already left a tip.”

“No no! Not that.” Chris then proceeds to walk back into the restaurant for but a quick second before reappearing from its doorway.

“Ta Da!” he yells, holding out his hand which contains a large fistful of candy mints. Ethan stares blankly at the hand’s contents.

“Those are from the front desk?” he asks.

“Yeah! Dude, I always get them when I come here. It's a very important step to eating out, you know. Here, take one. I’m feeling generous.”

As Ethan pops one of the mints into his mouth, the two cross the street and begin to enter Riverdale Park. As they do so, Guzel glares in anger at the levity of their interactions. She smashes her fist against a stone wall in anger as tears stream down her face.

DAMMIT! Why does he get to smile and have a good time when he's the one who took her away! You don't get to be happy!

She hits the wall over and over again, eventually creating a large crack with her enhanced strength. Whilst she is having a very emotional moment, Ethan and Chris turn their heads to see a crying girl hitting a cement wall really hard.

“Bad break up?” Chris asks in a facetious manner. However, Ethan does not answer, for he is less focused on Chris’s joke and more on her.

An Awakened, huh? She feels like a 2nd tier. If she were to cause trouble, the police might have a bit of difficulty, but they could manage. I won’t need to get involved. If they're all at this level, my ‘potential threat list’ won’t take long to investigate.

The two of them both remove her from their thoughts, deeming it ‘not their business’ as they continue down a wide paved trail into the park. As they walk down the park’s center path, the scenery is much like what one would expect: parents playing with children, people riding bikes or walking their dogs, an old man feeding ducks, etc.

“Ya know, I think my friend Eric would absolutely hate you,” says Chris suddenly, trying to start up a conversation.

“Hmm? Why?”

“Apparently, he wants to become a bounty hunter after he graduates. If he knew that you were just a poser, he would probably be insulted.”

“I see.”

Due to Ethan’s lack of response, the conversation quickly dies out and the silence between them quickly returns. However, before it gets awkward once more, Ethan asks a question while observing his surroundings.

“This path should take us up to McDonald street and to the police station, right?” Ethan asks out loud, expecting a response from the local resident standing next to him. However, no response reaches his ear. He turns towards Chris and notices he isn’t paying attention. Instead the teen is focused on a group of cross country girls jogging past them.

“One of those girls was looking at you.”

“Really?” Chris asks with excited eyes.

“No. You didn’t hear my question at all, did you?”

“Oi. Don’t give me false hope like that,” Chris tells him with a sarcastic voice. “You’ll destroy my already minuscule self esteem.”

“Right. Anyways, my question to you was ...”

Cutting him off, one of the girls who just jogged past them suddenly lets out a scream, causing Ethan and Chris to turn around in curiosity.

However, mid way through turning his head, a bullet grazes Chris’s nose. His eyes follow the bullet’s flight past his face until it penetrates into a park bench behind him. Only then, after the bullet has stopped, does the gunshot reach his ears and echo throughout the park, causing panic to ensue. Panic ensues as everyone frantically runs away from the gunshot’s direction.

Ethan and Chris become attentive as their gaze follows the bullet’s path back to the person who pulled the trigger. They’re eyes land upon a young woman pointing a gun at them with eyes reddened from crying.

Of all the times I could’ve missed a shot …

Frustrated at her aim, she quickly recomposes herself and stares down the two guys which she fired upon.

“The bounty hunter has a friend, huh. Sorry, but anyone connected to his happiness has to die as well.”

Facing an enemy, Ethan's face grows cold as ice. Comparatively, though, Chris is completely dumbstruck at being shot at. To his reaction, Guzel furrows her brows in confusion. Instead of fear, shock or anger, he, instead, merely stares at her with a idiotic expression.

It is then. All of Chris’s navite comes boiling up to the surface. With a gaped open mouth and flabbergasted eyes, he reaches out his hand and points at her.

“Y-you're that chick from earlier that was freaking out!”

“Eh?” simultaneously escapes both Guzel’s and Ethan’s mouth.

“Listen bitch,” he continues, “just because you had a bad breakup, it doesn't give you the right to shoot at me! With a temper like that, no wonder he dumped you!”

Guzel, who entered this confrontation with the serious intention to kill, seethes with rage at being falsely accused and berated for something so trivial. She grips the gun in her hand until her knuckles become white, causing the hilt to strain under her Awakened strength.

Meanwhile, Ethan turns and places his hand on Chris shoulder to say,

“I don't think that's why she was crying, Chris.”

“Ya never know man.”

“If I had to guess, based on the tattoo on her left forearm, she's a member of the band of thieves called the Ghosts,” he explains. “And I think she's come to get revenge on me for yesterday.”

He then turns his attention back towards her and asks, “Am I right?”

“You bastard,” she responds with an intense hatred in her tone. “The other's may not have been close with Lyra, but she was like a second sister to me. I'm going to make you suffer for what you did to her.”

She once again raises the pistol to point it at Chris. “I'm going to force you to watch your friend there die right before your eyes.”

“Um … can we discuss this?” Chris says, raising his hands in surrender as he tries to deescalate the situation. Despite his immense power, like most, he would prefer to not be shot at. However, she disregards his appeal and wraps her finger around the trigger. Chris eyes widen, bracing for the incoming shot.

Click. Guzel pulls the trigger. For Chris, time seemingly slows down as he watches the bullet launch from the barrel in his direction. Once it's within a few feet from his face, almost on instinct, he reaches out and smacks the bullet into the ground with his right palm, creating a small chip in the stone path.

“What the ...? That was ... so slow.”

Unable to believe how easily he blocked a bullet, Chris stares at his hand and notices a red mark from where it made contact. He curls his fist and squeezes his hand a few times, confirming that it is indeed still intact.

Ethan smirks at Chris’s astonishment of his own abilities, as he finds his reaction slightly amusing. He fully expected him to be able to stop the bullet, as anyone who can follow a flash step with an untrained eye can undoubtedly see objects moving at far greater speeds than a gunshot.

But Guzel, who fired the bullet, is not so pleased with this outcome. Seeing Chris stare at his hand after firing her shot, she discerned that he had somehow blocked it. A cold sweat starts form on her forehead as her hands grow unstable at this realisation.

This ... this is what Lyra had to face? A guy who can block bullets with his bare hands. Wait. If the hunter’s friend is this powerful, then how powerful is the hunter?

She suddenly comprehends why Lyra had died. No matter how strong she was, she was never able to escape the danger a bullet presented. But these guys have done just that. They have grown powerful enough to rid themselves of any fear or danger.

That is a realm which none of the ghosts have reached, the realm which their leader Alex spoke of. He claimed they were but small fish in a vast ocean, but Guzel hadn’t realised the extent of those words until now.

Feeling helpless, tears stream from her eyes once more. However, before she completely breaks down and loses hope, she grips her guns tight and quickly raises it, snapping it into firing position.

This does not go unnoticed, and the two people at which her gun is pointed once again become alert, delivering their undivided attention. Chris spreads his feet and prepares for an incoming bullet, raising his hands in order to block. Next to him, however, Ethan stares casually at the pistol, keeping his hands tucked into his pockets, seemingly unaffected by his current circumstances.

With her gun raised and her shooting stance primes, she begins pulling the trigger at a rapid-fire rate. She isn’t specifically aiming at either of them, her thought process being that she might increase her chances of hitting one of them if she were to fire at a hurried pace. Quickly, shot after shot, the magazine becomes empty but not a single bullet hits its mark.

Chris, with intense focus, slaps the bullets out of the air and into the ground, just like the first. Next to him, Ethan stands completely still with his hands remaining in his pockets, despite being targeted by some of the shots. However, unlike Chris, none of these shots contact his flesh.

The reason is because Ethan has erected a Chi barrier in front of his body. Normally, this barrier would be ill suited for battle, especially against opponents like Chris who can easily shatter it. But, in this instance, blocking a few regular bullets is not difficult, even for the slightly-better-than-amateur barrier skills that Ethan possesses (he always struggled with barrier creation during his training).

Because his barrier is weak and thin, Guzel did not notice he had created it, and thus she does not realise that the bullets which are fired at him are being ricocheted. In fact, she is completely unaware that a bullet has just ricocheted backwards and come within a few inches of her face.

After eleven shots, she ceases fire and removes her finger from the trigger. With her adrenaline pumping and her breathing now intensified, she lowers her gun slightly to check on the condition of her targets. Observing them, and noticing neither of them has a scratch, the willpower in her body slowly drains as she realises the hopelessness of the endeavor.

Noticing the enemy on the verge of inner defeat, Ethan decides to drive the nail into the coffin. He drops his barrier and takes a few steps towards her.

Are you done?” he asks in a cold tone. “That’s a 15 round R-72 your holding. You’ve now fired 13 shots including the two from earlier. That leaves you with one in the chamber and one in the magazine. You might as well empty your weapon. No point in leaving 2 unused shots in the chamber. A bullet for me and a bullet for the kid. What do you say? Or have you realised that your revenge is impossible to accomplish?”

His nonchalant description and breakdown of her scenario chills her to the bone. His demeanor and tone of voice are calm and collected without a trace of fear. However, she can feel an intense killing intent radiating from him, as if her primal instincts are screaming that she’s a rabbit who just met a tiger.

Hearing his words, she makes the quick witted decision to turn tail and run, but on the first step she feels her legs shaking enough to buckle.

N-no way. Just a few minutes ago, I had the strength to take a person’s life without hesitation. I was so angry, but now I’m too scared to even run away?

Ethan stares at the clearly frightened enemy before him, and he begins to think about his past.

Is this how I looked when I came across powerful people in the past? What a pathetic sight. The difference between she and I is that I never picked unwinnable fights of my own volition. How sad she couldn’t immediately tell the difference in strength between her opponent. Even as clueless as I was, I never made a mistake this severe.

Frustration begins to build within him at the stupidity of her actions, as they struck some kind of nerve within him. A blade of Chi slowly forms over his right hand as he takes a step closer to her.

“Not going to empty the clip?” he asks in a powerful tone. “If not, I think I’ll make my counter attack now.” However, before he can advance any further, a hand reaches out and grabs him on the shoulder.

“Oi. Calm your tits, Slice-n-dice.” says Chris, trying to prevent anyone from dying. “I don't think you need to kill her. It would be easy enough to take her down without the lethality, right? Then you get to interrogate her later or something.”

Ethan looks back at him. “That's true enough. It would be nice to get some answers.” he then dematerializes the chi blade and turns his head towards the park entrance, having sensed a new presence. “Oh, cops have arrived.”

Just then, as if on cue, two policemen sprint into the park from the direction of the station. Approaching the scene before them with caution, they place their hands on their holsters and shout,

“Police! Everyone, put your hands in the air!”

Ethan and Chris turn their bodies to look at them before following their command. The two slowly raise their hands into the air and await for the territory authorities to sort out this matter. Ethan feels a slight sting as the opportunity to collect her bounty just slipped away, however this is but a fleeting thought which he pushes to the back of his mind.

With Ethan’s attention torn away from her, Guzel seizes the chance and swivels her body around to make a run for it. But upon doing so, her eyes land on her sister Faith approaching her carrying a large duffle bag.

“Faith?! What the hell are you doing here?”

Faith continues to approach her, a look of sheer determination not commonly seen on her face. Guzel realises the change in her sister’s disposition.

Faith starts to unzip the duffle bag hanging by her shoulder and before Guzel can ask anymore questions, she reaches into the bag while looking her twin dead in the eye.

“Sis, no offense, but you weren't prepared enough.”

After these words, spoken with a soft, meek voice, leave her mouth, she drops the duffle bag on the ground while keeping a grip around its contents. As the bag falls, it reveals a large military grade automatic rifle resting in Faith’s hands.

Just before pulling the trigger, Faith’s killing intent causes her Chi to spike, alerting Ethan to her presence. He quickly turns his head in response to the existence of a second enemy, and notices the monster of a rifle whose barrel is pointed at Chris and himself.

“Chris, turn around!”

Chris immediately and turns his head to face the newly arrived enemy. However, in turning his head too quickly, his glasses fall off his nose and onto the ground, leaving him unable to see what threat he is facing.

Then, before he can pick up his glasses, he feels a sharp, sudden sting on his sternum. Before he can process what caused the pain, he is then bombarded with a hail of more sharp stings all over his body accompanied by the roar of the machine gun.

Unable to react to the storm of bullets without his glasses, he decisively raises his arms in front of his face in order to protect his eyes and throat. The bullets impact the bare skin of his arms, likely to leave bruises once he wakes tomorrow.

Beside him, Ethan has once again created a Chi shield to block the bullets, but now he is being forced to concentrate intently, as the flimsy barrier from before would likely break under the barrage of automatic fire he faces now.

The two of them stand still while taking the shower of rapid fire, trying to keep the enemy’s attention focused on them, but this is for nought. Because of their heightened reaction time, they have experienced all of this at a far slower rate than anyone else. In reality, only a half a second has passed since Faith fired her first shot.

Because of this, the cops, unable to react quick enough, still stand upright and are just about to duck their heads from the gunshots. But unfortunately, before they can do so, one of the bullets hits the side of Chris’s right arm and ricochets, piercing through the skull of one of the two policemen.

The cop behind him watches his partner fall to the ground. However, he assumes that he had reacted speedily to the gunfire and had fallen to the ground to duck his head. Only after he follows suit and dives to the ground as well does he discover his partner’s brains have been blown out.

The shooting continues for another eight seconds, however, to everyone involved, it feels like an eternity. Hundreds of bullets are sprayed from the muzzle of the rifle before the magazine finally runs dry.

Once the shooting finally ceases, Chris cautiously lowers his hands to the ground in order to pick up his fallen glasses. He taps the ground a few times before he eventually finds and quickly shoves them onto his face.

Able to see once more, he observes his surroundings and notices that his clothes are torn to shreds from the shooting. But he pays this no mind, then turning his attention towards the pair of policemen to check on their well being. He is then startled to see one of them adamalty shaking the other awake but to no avail.

‘Is … is he dead?’ he thinks to himself, scared that it might actually be the case. Ethan also notices the deceased policemen and silently criticizes himself for it.

If I had sensed her enter the park before she started shooting, he wouldn’t have died. I need to improve my sensory capabilities a bit more.

On the other hand, Guzel also surveys the scene before her, wide eyed and in mild shock from today's events. The targets she hoped to kill with a mere pistol survived a pelting of gunfire from a much more powerful weapon, one that fires close to 10 rounds a second. In the end, only a bystanding policeman died while the intended targets haven’t a single scratch. Her revenge from a few minutes ago now seems like nothing but a pipe dream.

In a daze, she looks forward at her sister standing in front of her. Faith’s breathing is elevated from adrenaline and an increased heart rate. Despite this, she doesn’t have the same shocked expression as Guzel. In fact, her thoughts are far more calm and collected.

I knew since they survive against my sister they'd be tough, but I hadn't expected them to come out unscathed.

Wasting not a second longer, she reloads the rifle, retrieving a magazine from the bag and swapping it in for the empty one, before turning her body around towards her sister.

“Guzel, you need to get to Alex and tell him to get out of the Territory. I will hold them off for you.”

Her tone is stern but it's contrasted by the soft and weak sounding voice which spoke the phrase. Guzel is unable to take her sister’s words seriously.

“Don't bother! Those guys are monsters! You'll be killed instantly.”

“I'll try to get captured so you can save me later. Just go! I can’t lose you either!”

Guzel stares at her in amazement. Who is the person in front of her? Faith, the meek, cowardly and courteous twin she had come to know was now barking orders at her while she offered to risk her life.

She realises just how kind her sister is comparatively to her. Upon Lyra’s death, all she thought about was revenge, consumed by her hatred towards those who took her surrogate older sister from her.

Faith, although just as angry and resentful, instead, chose to appreciate and protect those who she still shared her life with. A twin, with whom she had shared her whole life with, shared her pain and happiness with: that’s what she chose to protect. And in this choice, she was forced to follow that foolish twin into a confrontation with two beings far stronger than they.

People have praised her for being the tougher, more grown up of the two, always taking the lead in life. They called her more mature, more social and more likely to succeed in life. But looking at this scene, who really is the ‘more mature’ of the two. The one who potentially rushed into her death without thought because she couldn’t control her emotions, or the one who chose to hold on tight to the person they hold dear in the face of their surrogate older sister's killer, despite being in grief.

That is an easy question to answer. Guzel, realizing she hasn’t grown at all since the day they were kidnapped from home, laments her own incompetence. Deciding to leave this task for the more suited sister, she wipes a tear from her eye and prepares to run back to base for help.

“Thank you, Faith, and I’m sorry. Just don’t die until we rescue you.”

“Of course.”

However, as she prepares to sprint away, out of the corner of her eye she notices the still surviving policemen draw his gun with a vengeful look on his face. He then proceeds to aim his gun at Faith from across the field.

Guzel’s eyes widen, and on instinct, in order to protect the person who just saved her, she lifts her pistol and points it at the policemen, preparing to shoot him down before his bullet can reach Faith.

Standing in the middle of this scene, Chris and Ethan both recognize what’s about to happen.

“Chris, take the cop. He’s too worked up.”

“Got it.”

Before either trigger can be pulled, the two explode away at extreme speeds from their positions, closing the distance between their targets instantly.

On one side of the small field, Chris appears behind the rage-filled policemen and slaps the back of his head, concussing him and knocking him out. Chris catches him as he falls limp to the ground and gently lays him down. Next to him lies the policeman’s partner, blood staining the grass under his person along with the uniform. Chris bites down on his teeth hard, preventing himself from puking at the sight. Chris feels incredibly guilty that someone else died as a result of an attack on his life.

On the other side, Ethan arrives in front of Guzel, appearing out of nowhere using Flash step. Before her eyes can even recognize his figure before her, he forms a Chi blade around his hand and proceeds to cleanly slice through Guzel’s right wrist, cutting off the hand which held her pistol. Both pistol and hand fall to the ground without fail, effectively disarming her.

To Faith, this looks imperceptibly fast. After the two suddenly disappear from her line of sight, she hears her sister let out the most gut wrenching scream her ears have ever been privy to. Panicked, she swings her body around, only to see blood gushing from her sister’s right arm.

W-what just … ?

She freezes, her body unable to move a single muscle as her sister passes out from shock. She had prepared herself for death, and even the possibility that Guzel might die as well. However, she never dreamed that she would be dismembered without either of them comprehending what happened.

She attempts to raise the rifle in order to aim it at Ethan, but in doing so, she realises that she had already dropped it due to fear. Before she can react any further, she hears Chris’s voice reach her ear from behind her.

“This is payback for the cop you killed.”

He swings his arm down, chopping her on the back of the neck. Due to his strength, the momentum from the impact carries her face and body smashing into the ground, breaking her nose and rendering her unconscious. Chris stares at her on the ground before leaning down and shifting her head to the side so she shouldn’t suffocate.

“I know it was payback,” Chris says, looking Ethan in the eye, “But I don’t like hurting people with my strength. Besides, hitting girls is something you're taught not to do since a kid. I feel like the bad guy right now.”

Chris then looks down at the girl by Ethan’s feat. Almost the second he lays eyes on her, he covers his mouth, his face becoming slightly green at the sight of hand laying on the ground.

“What's wrong?” Ethan asks.

“It's nothing. I just .. have never seen a shot head or severed hand until today. Plus, like I said, I don’t like hurting others much, so I’m kinda sick to my stomach.”

“Don’t worry. You get used to it. Also, don’t feel too bad about the girl. She got off way easier than what she deserved.”

“Yeah but …”

Before Chris can continue, a thought suddenly pops into his head. He points at the unconscious Guzel, blood continuously streaming from her arm.

“You know, I’m not a doctor but that looks really bad. Don't we need a makeshift tourniquet or something?”

“Why? We only need one alive.”

“Have a bit of human decency, man. There is a person bleeding out next to you. We should at least try to help her.”

He thinks about disputing his point, but stops when he realises how calm the teen is about the situation. He considers how angry most would be with him had he cut off a hand in front of someone else, and therefore begins to be grateful of Chris’s presence.

He may not adopt my way of doing things, but he isn’t appalled either. I take back what I was thinking earlier. He’s a perfect ally for the future.

Caving in to Chris’s suggestion, he closes his eyes and focuses Chi into his right hand. It starts glowing with a softer luminosity than when using the Chi Fist technique, which intrigues Chris. However, before he can ask, Ethan reaches down and presses his hand against the bleeding stump at the end of her arm.

Once his hand is firmly wrapped around the end, a sizzling noise flares up as the bleeding begins to slow. After continuing to his hold the stump for half a minute, the sizzling noise drowns out as he pulls his hand away. The once bleeding stump has now been covered with what looks to be a thin layer of poor skin.

Chris stares back and forth between Ethan and this magically appearing skin with an extremely confused expression.

“W-What did you do?” he asks.

“I forced the healing process into overdrive. A thin layer of skin appeared because of that. My teacher Genku had me learn it so I wouldn’t bleed out if injured. I rarely use the technique because the skin turns into terrible scar tissue. However, now it's not my body so I don’t care.”

“So much for human decency. That’s pretty cold, man.”

“Better than dying.”

“You cut her arm off in the first place!”

However, this reminds himself that the arm still lays on the ground beside her, and thus his face turns green once more.

Just then, a group of 10 policemen, including the Sheriff, suddenly rush into the park with their pistol already drawn. They survey the scene to find Ethan with a teenager in shredded clothing standing over two young girls lying down in their own blood. Not realising how question-inducing the situation looks to those arriving, Ethan casually waves over the police without any hesitation.

“Will I get in trouble for knocking out that cop?” Chris meekly asks.

“Put the blame on me.”

“Seriously? No complaints here.”