Chapter 22: Wild hunt IV

They hesitated for a moment. Their fingers trembled, their legs stood idle. There seemed to be something on their minds. But then suddenly, one of them shouted.

“Come on, you assholes!”

The newly enraged thugs rushed straight towards it, one after the other in a storm of ferocious screams and cries.

The shotgun fired once again. They hadn’t even seen it be taken out, yet there it was, a large firearm in its hands. Two fell from the front. No matter what, those shells could never leave permanent damage, but that did not stop both of the delinquents from staying down on the floor, writhing in pain.

The fugitive then turned around and shot a few more times toward the back, to the left and to the right, the countless pellets spraying right through their targets. There was a hiss. Someone had reached them from one of their blind sides, but they kicked her face away before she could’ve even given them a proper look. The delinquent recovered instantly, trying to raze them from the side, but her hand felt only air as her target had backed away in that same instant, after which her inebriated face was immediately blasted with hard lead pellets.

The rest were closing the distance. The creature bashed another one away with the shotgun and then put it back, replacing it with a long, shimmering silver blade with which it slashed to bits and pieces the sightless fodder that kept squirming back, no matter how many of their comrades they saw mercilessly mutilated.

Tha pale girl grinned, all the way from the back. Keeping her people at bay was clearly proving to be a difficult task, no? More and more of them came, nearly stomping over the criminal, each trying to have a go at their head. They could no longer take on all of them simultaneously at such short range. Soon enough, she would be able to move in and deliver the finishing blow…

Or so she had hoped. The masked fugitive took out a glass bottle from their bag. A small, fragile bottle, which they proceeded to smash into the ground before any of the ruffians could properly reach it.

Right then, pallid, yellowish gas quickly filled the area around the black-clad figure, causing the savage mob to drop down to the floor, coughing and wailing as they inevitably breathed it in. Both it and its victims were soon engulfed by the translucent fumes, which, as they slowly reached the farthest Phantoms on that roof, withdrawn at the edges, caused them to revolt and wheeze in agony with its strong scent.

Try as she might, the hooded girl all the way could not handle even a whiff of the floating poison.

“Why, you…! This… It’s garlic! Everyone, fall back! Cover up with your arms and fall back!!”

She yelled relentlessly, but very few would hear her out. Most of the front lines already lay on the floor by then, and from the middle of the dreadful cloud, the masked prowler emerged, not a single scratch on them. They then turned their sights toward the middle of the horde ahead, pointing the tip of the silver blade toward the pale girl.

“What in the…!?”

“He’s still standing, boss! What do we do!?”

(Shit…)

The pale girl grit her teeth. No amount of protective gear could resist that kind of poison, could it? There was no way her Phantoms could stand tall for long against something like that…

But still, that had been an enormous amount of allicin for them to just spread around there…! There was no telling how its effects would vary in an artificial gaseous state, but it was definitely still heavily toxic, if not lethal.

Yet… Somehow… That thing was still moving just fine right there in the middle of it all... That thing should be dead by now, or at least considerably dazed after such an exposure. Should it not?

The situation was dire, but she needed to maintain her cool. She cackled once again.

“How interesting… You are a freak of nature in the truest sense, aren’t you?”

“This will be your last warning. What your foot soldiers experienced just now was just a ‘weak variant’, so to say. Consider it a proof of mercy. I will not, however, be using any more of those from now on, so either you all surrender now, or I will crank up the poison and kill each and everyone, just like the rabble down there last week.”

She sneered from afar.

“My, my, my, some big mouth you’ve got there. So you weren’t even aiming to finish us off in the first place? And to be so arrogant that you’d waste our time bragging about some toys instead of fighting. Big mistake.”

“So you will not give up, even now?”

She cackled once again.

“Stand down, boys. I’m taking care of this.”

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“No matter what, you will never stop, will you?”

The remaining Phantoms still standing bowed once again and moved to the borders of the roof.

“Why is that?” it kept asking. But it received no answer.

Faint rumbling could be heard from far away, a thick, heavy sound that slowly filled their ears. The starless night sky, high above them, was soon blocked out by an opaque ceiling of even darker clouds, the bright moon gradually losing its form as the faint white light pulled away from the tall roof. Each second, the rumbling became stronger, louder. It filled the whole city with its toneless melody.

Plunged into that never-ending shadow, she took a step forward and grabbed the side of her hood, pulling it back in a single motion as several locks of long, white hair fell loose around her collar. The pale girl dragged down halfway the zipper of her oversized jacket, and from the small gap, in her hand she brought out a handful of opaque plastic tubes held together by thin strings, gripping them firmly between her fingers.

She drew the rigid, obscure mass closer to her face, blocking any sight of her features from her nose down, and promptly crushed the dozens of small objects as she pressed the handful onto her mouth. Her eyes widened, some of the bright, scarlet substance escaping from between her fingers, several droplets leaking in small streams from her hand and splashing faintly on the concrete beneath.

Most of the substance had vanished, however, and though her hand was undeniably stained, not a single spot of the substance seemed to have smeared her pale face. Little about her appearance seemed to have changed, aside from her eyes. At first glance, her pupils had slightly narrowed. Nonetheless, the true change did not reside there.

Those indomitable eyes, an intense crimson that could blind the careless sight. One could not be sure of whether such a thing was but a mere illusion, though it was as if her eyes had become a source of light in their own right. A frightening, inescapable light that could pierce through the soul. Lightless, crimson light.

She let out a feral hiss from between her fingers.

She drew her scarlet-smeared hand to the side, throwing away a misshapen ball of broken hard plastic, dyed a dark orange by part of its contents, which soon faded into minuscule pieces dragged away by the wind. Her face, however, was still as pale as before, not a stain of it in sight.

Her eyes squinted, bringing to their sights their new prey.

It was a short individual, considerably thin as well, judging from outward appearance alone. Its breathing had seemed slightly shallow, too. Not surprising, after the confrontation only a few seconds prior, and it was doing its best not to move much at the moment. Trying to save up energy, maybe? But, if so… Even though it seemed abnormally nimble, it was probable that it tired quite easily as well. Truly, a bizarre individual.

And all that was left to determine, then, was where and how it had gotten such a potent poison in impossibly high quantities. She also assumed it should have been wearing some variety of impermeable, protective armor underneath the ragged clothing, seeing as it didn’t seem affected by the allicin. Though whatever it was, it definitely had to be something she’d never heard of before.

If nothing else, it was fair to assume it to be on the level of a weak delinquent, considering the way it relied so heavily on melee weapons and shallow trickery. That was obviously because they were physically feeble, thus requiring more roundabout methods for battle.

Her true target did not lie in the body in front of her, in short, but in the mind beyond it. If she could not fight through their methods, much less guess any of their plans or tricks, the only option left was to react faster than them. Hit them before they could think of the next contingency.

She pressed the heels of her shoes down, readying for a sprint, while the black figure quickly took out an even smaller bottle than the last time, but instead of smashing it, it carefully opened it up, letting a minuscule fraction of its contents drip out, covering the silver blade’s surface and edges.

Right after, it took out another modestly sized cylindrical container, which it opened and turned upside down, pouring several milliliters of what seemed like a translucent liquid over itself and inside the gig-bag as well. The container was then thrown far up and away from the roof, falling far down a few meters in the air before a large explosion lit it up against the starless night sky.

The girl’s legs had frozen in place.

(What the…? Why the hell would they even…?)

The criminal stepped forward as they stretched forward their right arm, again pointing the silver blade at her.

“I see, so that’s how it is.” it said, its voice echoing throughout. “I suppose it’s open season on Phantoms, then.”

Wholly out of patience, she sprang forward, covering nearly two meters with every step in an inhuman rush, and the figure soon followed her example, rather late.

In a single instant she had nearly halved their distance, while they’d only run a few feeble meters towards her.

Before she could reach them, however, a small object fell from their free hand, flying diagonally and landing right beside her feet as she ran. She had only a split second to see them turn around and cover up their own head with their arms, before a blinding light, accompanied by an equally deafening noise, filled both her eyes and ears.

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