[PM] [???] Week 276: God is dead

[K3]

In an instant, his vision was filled with hellfire. In the next, he was consumed by it.

A carmine flash, and low rumble accompanied the detonation of the Bala as Arano impacted the wall. His cry of pain masked against the roar of the hollow attack, he tumbled into the cliff-face with a solid crunch!

He lay still for a moment, before groaning. He tried to roll over - only for agony to lance up his form. His breath was shaky, the young adult unable to take deep breaths in the onslaught of his wounds. Occasionally gasping at the jolts of pain racing up his form, he steeled himself briefly and forced himself to lie on his back.

Arano's vision went spotty, and he bit his lip hard enough to draw blood. Any further attempts to move elicited only dredges of anguish.

Mouko awoke in a cold sweat, eyes wide and fearful. She glanced about, her tigers now absent. She tried to stand, only to grip her head in agony. The throbbing pain eased briefly, and she cast about the summit, taking in the slowly thawing caldera. She had only known the brief snatch of madness, before her world had fallen from beneath her.

The captains next to her breathed slowly, attempting to take in the events that had occurred. She counted the forms among her, and then peeked over the edge of the caldera. The shinigami were all present, as was Zakki, where as..?

"Arano?" She called briefly, coughing lightly as her voice came out croaky and weak.

She stumbled to her feet, groaning slightly in pain as her headache returned. Forcing her energy back to the surface, she called upon her tigers once more. Sending Ryou and Ishi to collect the two collapsed captains on the caldera, she hardly acknowledged Zakki.

Where was Arano? She felt for his energy, and tried not to show alarm at his dwindling strength. Clamoring up the cliff-side, she couldn't stop the look of horror that crossed her features. He was a mess.

His hair had been mostly singed away, a significant chunk of his scalp exposed and bleeding. His vest had been obliterated, the hardy fortitude of Advents all but stripped away with the boy's exhaustion. Third degree burns covered a large portion of his upper chest, blood dribbling feebly onto the ground around him.

Pushing her tired, worn energies further, she tried to stabilize him.

Grabbing him, she could feel the ache in her body in mind - her arms shaking even as she heaved Arano with little effort. A short while later, she had the collective powerhouses of the Gotei and Earth before her - all looking worse for wear.

She looked to Sayis, then to Zakki, and then down to Arano. His eyes flickered open and closed, struggling to maintain consciousness. She looked back to them. "What do we do now..?"

Arano's mind fluctuated between agony and peaceful oblivion. He tried to focus on breathing. In and out. In and out. Nothing else mattered, just keep breathing.

His vision had gone dark in the aftermath of the attack, the flash blinding him. For how long, he didn't know. The warmth of Mouko's energy served as a brief respite, the only hint that they had in any way survived.

The Director licked his lips. His words were half-mumbled, trying to form a coherent idea. "Tokyo... Fourth Division... have them... move to Sougi... receive... there..."

Focusing once more on his breathing, Arano's body contorted briefly with a sudden pang of agony. He could do little more, lapsing into a pained silence.​

Final [ 600 / 3400 ]

 

[Time Lady Katie]

As time resumed, Adelaide felt something smack her in the stomach. Something felt like fire. Damn, that was something the puny archmage hadn’t seen coming. Then another blast of fire hit her shoulder. Then her other shoulder.

The trouble with being a martyr, Adelaide smirked through the agony, you usually have to die.

“Please,” remarked Brooke, or Prometheus, or Isogu, or whatever the hell Adelaide figure it was at this point, “this is nothing. You’ve done worse to yourself.”

“You’d have thought a ‘God’s’ counterattack would at least have the gravitas to kill me,” Adelaide tried to keep the smirk going but it fell into a grimace.

The visage of Brooke shrugged and looked down at the volcano beneath the redhead, “Though if you can’t keep control of your defiance of earthly laws, I don’t like your chances. Do those little wings of yours work?”

Knocked back by the bala, the second greatest Mystic fell toward the waiting throat of the volcano. Fitting, since she had sentenced White Corona to the same fate.

And then, for the second time today, Adelaide hit something really, really hard. Well, that is to say she hit it hard. The first thing she had hit had been in fact quite soft. But that only seemed an important distinction to the Englishwoman. In the ultimate question of things coming full circle, the Lieutenant hit a chunk of rock large enough to support her, the same way she had swept Corona’s earth away.

The redhead looked up in time to see two equally magical things happen.

The Dread Lord was consumed by acrid black smoke and a satisfying groan of reality warping to accommodate the forbidden magic of her little dagger. That felt good. Really good. So good that she didn’t much care for his proclamation that the world was his anyway. She coughed, and quite satisfied that imaginary Brooke had been right about her chances of survival, Adelaide shouted back; “Not today!” with the kind of intensity that someone as wounded as she was really oughtn’t have tried. It made her collapse back onto the rock that supported her in pain.

Then there was the other thing the redhead noticed. Though she was clearly wounded still, a certain Captain was finally well enough thanks to the attention she had gotten to join the fray just as the fray was sent somewhere else altogether. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t still there to do a job. Her reiatsu enveloped the rock beneath Adelaide and gently lifted it, raising Lilith’s second-in-command out of the volcano’s throat. She didn’t say anything, audibly or telepathically, but smiled down at Adelaide. She still was weak, and rescuing the redhead was more work than she would’ve admitted, but she made it look simple, as if it wasn’t an effort at all.

Seeing her Captain made Adelaide just... laugh. They had won this fight. Sure, Prometheus’ shackles had been broken and sure this victory was one that couldn’t exactly be repeated. And there was the matter of Emptybones, White Corona and Brainfang, but those were the problems of tomorrow. Today, the Gotei had held Prometheus back and Adelaide had sent the dark god back to the desert he came from. She was exhausted and in a lot of pain, and certainly a trial was waiting for her back home, but right now, for this exact moment, Adelaide had done exactly what she had always wanted to do.

She had kept a whole lot of people alive.

Not bad, child, the honey-sweet voice of Lashiel echoed in Adelaide’s head; Foolish, self-righteous, arrogant, and needlessly showoffish, but all things considered, not bad.

Thanks for that. The angel with burning wings closed her eyes. She had fought Captains and Gods today, and frankly she had earned a little rest.

628 Words
3410 FINAL​

 

[Apeiron]

It’s over, Haresuno thought with a sigh.

“And not a moment too soon, it would seem.” Sheathing her bankai, Nana helped Haresuno to his feet. Between his gut, the heat of Mount Fuji under their feet, and pushing himself to use god hand to get to the heart of the mountain, it was surprising that he hadn’t passed out.

“Yeah,” the Founder-Captain chuckled. “If we had to erupt the volcano, I would have felt pretty bad.” Effortlessly, Nana pulled the two of them into Gyakuuryu. The world blurred and he felt it shift around them. Quicker than he could blink, the two of them were back at the top, back up the earthen path Haresuno had hastily made. “You know, it’s insulting how easily you can do that....”

Nana just shrugged. “Yeah, well...” The Amaterasu-head just looked at him with level blue eyes, and a small smirk curled up the side of her face. “It’s not my fault you’re slacking.”

“Ha. Ha.” Without another word, the two captains trudged back to where they had left Sayis and the others.

Even with this storm past, there was soon to be another one, and Haresuno’s face darkened at that thought. As he looked around at everyone he could see, however, he decided to keep his grim thoughts to himself.


We’ll have to be ready, he told himself, but for now we can relax just a little. We won this round.

[1900]

 

[MoonlitRain014]

Zakki had been fairly sure that he was going to die when Prometheus first appeared. The ghostly pale young man felt relief now but there was a part of him that refused to believe that the ancient being was actually gone. The chilling words that he'd left as he vanished made Zakki sure that this was a temporary reprieve rather than any kind of true victory. Everything was drenched in bone-numbing exhaustion now and the wounded little band looked decidedly pathetic at the moment. There were shinigami in various states of wounding, Arano was completely shattered by the tremendous effort he'd expended and Mouko was also running on low reserves. Doubt seized Zakki as he came to stand close enough to hear what Arano had to say as he realized that once again he'd failed to make any aggressive impact on the battle.

There were more important considerations now because the Director of Fukshima was in a bad way. Even with his limited first-aid training the lean young man recognized that if someone didn't do something for Arano now, he might not make it off of this mountain. Perhaps in some small way Zakki would be able to contribute more meaningfully to this situation. If he could keep the indigo-haired teen going until proper medical care could be found he'd feel that at least he'd kept one of his people from a negative fate. Kneeling down next to the teen the waif-like youth concentrated the reiatsu flowing through him and laid his long-fingered hands against Arano's chest. He felt a warm glow begin to seep out and spread across the prone form of the Director as the healing powers started their work. It would take a while for any concrete improvements to be shown but already he could tell the young man was breathing more easily and that his pain was lessening.

He spoke quietly to his compatriot, "I'll make sure that we carry out your instructions. Just lie back now and let me help you. After what you did for all of us, I'm not going to let you fall on this battlefield. Without what you did I don't think we would have survived this. Thank you, Arano. We all owe you a tremendous debt."

After he'd said his piece, Zakki concentrated fully on doing the best he could to heal Arano's wounds. It was at these moments that he remembered why it was that he continued to believe in Cerberus and what the Corporation was trying to do and why he wanted to keep it moving forward.

[429/1462] FINAL