NOVPUB[Uhhhh Razor sis? We might have a problem. There’s some invisible force...thing blocking me from reaching you and the child.]
[Huh? You mean a forcefield?,]
[Yeah, that. It’s too tough for me and my fists to breakthrough.]
[Fucking fantastic...wait...I’m just now noticing the aether fluxes of both Archanidame and Lacerage. Are they around? Can you ask them to help break this thing?]
[They’re too busy fighting that weird Venus lady. She’s got this weird axe thingy that’s making it hard for them to beat her easily.]
[Of course she does...ah fuck, gotta go, the child is freaking out in here and the LOCATION SIZED IDIOT TRIO ISN’T HELPING! Try to figure something out on your end, Spring Brawler. Counting on ya.]
[Okay....,]
________________________________________________
{DID YOU GUYS HEAR SOMETHING?}
{OTHER THAN THE SWEET SOUNDS OF DESPAIR AND ALL OF ITS POSSIBLE PERMUTATIONS? NO.}
{D’AWWW, LOOK AT THIS LITTLE DUO. THEY THINK THEIR FEET ARE NOTHING BUT STUMPS NOW!}
________________________________________________
Spring Brawler sat on a nearby rooftop, watching the zakos fight the shadows while trying his damndest to squeeze his non-existent braincells together to come up with something in regards to breaking that stupid barrier. 𝓷𝓸𝓿𝓅𝓊𝓫.𝒸ℴ𝓶
=Spring Brawler. Status report.=
[Huh?]
It was in that point in time, that the smartest beings he knew had decided to barge into his head.
<Ignore the jargon, she just needs your help with something.>
[Oh? Okay.]
=Excellent, Spring, I need you to get as high as you can into the air and look at the warehouse district. Can you do that?=
[Sure thing. Weird to ask, but okay.]
Following the instructions of the library assistants, Spring Brawler proceeded to leap off the roof he was standing on, making sure to keep his hands on the roof’s edge, however.
[Alley-oop!]
As Spring Bralwer fell to the ground below, his spring arms began to stretch out and grow taut from the momentum. When the tip of his feet touched the ground, Spring Brawler launched himself back up the building’s side and up into the air, releasing his grip from the roof’s edge this time.
Once he was airborne, Spring Brawler rotated his body so he could look down at the warehouse district in all of its glory, i.e., figure out what Logos wanted from him exactly.
[This okay?]
=Perfect.=
Spring Brawler was only up there for a second before he had to come back down to the ground, breaking his fall with a well timed punch.
________________________________________________
=Not perfect, because things have spiralled from obvious answer to plain fucking bullshit.=
<What do you mean?>
=The [Five Shadow Kings] formation requires at least three Acolytes to be constantly meditating in order to keep it going, or maybe a Master who knows what they’re doing.=
<Yes and what’s the issue? I’m pretty sure the zako are taking care of that as we speak.>
=The issue is that barrier surrounding the formation. It’s not coming from any of the people outside of the formation, it’s coming from inside it. It’s an array.=
<Oh...bollocks.>
=Yup.=
<And we can’t ask the kaijin to break it due to the Unknowing effect making them wild.>
=Yes.=
<And the moment the formation is undone the sheer brute force was of suddenly being "known"->
=Will greatly weaken the kaijin until they can get their asses back to our lord, who is still suffering from an exploding headache.=
<Oh we are up shit creek without a paddle or a floatie aren’t we?>
=Indeed.=
<Hmmmmm, wait! Isn’t Razor Maiden inside of that formation? Can’t she just destroy the array from the inside?>
=Maybe... it’s worth a shot at least.=
________________________________________________
BANG!
"Ah! What was that?!"
"Shh, shh, it’s okay. Everything will be okay...," Razor Maiden said in a soothing voice as she could possibly muster, while attempting to gently stroke Jasper’s panicky back.
A bit of a delicate task to perform given her literal knife fingers, if anything, she was gently scratching the boy’s back.
Moments after realizing that he was in some weird dark place and not dead, Jasper had attempted to go and look for his sister again via running in a direction.
However, before he could, the sounds of men screaming in pain, desperation and madness ,mixed in with horrible inhuman laughter, had caused the boy’s legs to all but buckle underneath him out of terror, with the faint sounds of sobbing bubbling in his throat.
He was about to try and suppress this cry, making the logic that he was a "man" and men don’t cry, until an unexpected set of arms wrapped around him and attempted to comfort him.
"Shhh, shh, it’s okay. Everything will be okay..."
The voice sounded weird to him, clearly inhuman in terms of tone, but the emotions behind felt... genuine. Like it belonged to someone who actually cared about him.
He had heard this time once before at the orphanage, but the lady who actually used that tone suddenly disappeared one day.
Having heard this tone being used with him once more, Jasper couldn’t help but trust this voice and the arms attached to them...even if it was a lie, at least it was more comforting than his normal truth.
’Shit,’ Razor Maiden thought to herself, ’Battlefields are definitely no place for a fucking kid...how the hell do I get him out of here?’
Razor Maiden was more of a fighter than a thinker, so she had no idea how to break the barrier except with brute force. The only issue with that though was that if Spring Brawler couldn’t do it, neither could she.
If only one of the other kaijin wasn’t busy ignoring her to go do their own weird torture thing than maybe, just maybe they could actually do something fucking productive and not-
=Razor Maiden? Razor Maiden are you there?Can you hear me?=
[Oh thank gods, individuals smarter than me,] Razor answered while still comforting the much more relaxed while still somewhat panicking Jasper, [please tell me you have a way for me to get this kid out of this fucking formation and barrier.]
=Actually, yes. But we’re gonna need you to do something.=
[Okay, what exactly?]
<The barrier holding y’all in is being caused by an array that was established inside of the formation prior. As far as we can tell it’s an [Eclipsing Shadow Barricade] array, not exactly powerful in its own, but it gets stronger the darker an area it’s used in is.>
[That explains some shit.]
=Exactly, but the barrier is weaker than when it’s normally used, an indicator that it’s on an ill-suited format.=
[Meaning...]
<They printed the array into a scroll or several. Find those scrolls, destroy them, whole thing falls apart.>
This was honestly the best news Razor Maiden had heard all night in regards to this stupid ass situation, but there was just one glaring issue.
[How the fuck am I supposed to find sheets of paper in a pitch black shit hole?!]
Luckily, Logos and Pathos had an answer to that too...sorta.
=The array’s origin point should be releasing a weird aether signal in there. Akin to a hum or something if you were to sweep your senses in it’s general direction.=
<That or try to get a super powerful light source up in there, and I mean like legit light aether up in there..>
[Wait, what? I thought the [Five Shadow Kings] formation makes it so light can’t get in,] Razor Maiden asked.
=Not exactly. It creates an area of darkness that saps one’s senses sure, but only on the physical level. Aether ain’t physical, and powerful enough blast of Luxari aether would blast the whole formation’s effect...at least temporarily.=
<Either way, if you want out, you’re gonna have to break that array first.>
=Good luck.=
As soon as they had delivered the information, Razor Maiden felt her connection to the two assistive spirits go quiet.
Razor Maiden knew what she had to do in order to break the array and get herself and the kid out of there, but...
"Big sis...please don’t leave me alone...I’m scared."
"Shh, shh, it’s okay. It’s okay...," Razor Maiden repeated again as she kept soothing the panicked child.
The moment she left, she had no idea what would happen to this kid.
He could just be sitting here where she left him, crying his eyes out in terror, hoping someone to help.
He could panick and run, and end up running into one of those shadow assholes, or worst, one of the kaijin going haywire at this moment.
If they were this cruel and reality bending to powerhouses, what the fuck could they do to a kid?
Regardless of the choices though, Razor knew that deep down inside she needed to keep an eye on this kid to make sure nothing happened to...huh.
’No...I don’t need to keep an eye on him...I need to keep everyone else’s eyes on me...,’ Razors thought to herself.
As this one little realization played in her mind, something deep inside began to stir.
Something...fundamental.
________________________________________________
{Desire catalyst: Realization has been confirmed.}
{Desire: Admiration has been confirmed.}
{Establishing Formula pattern...now.}
