Chapter 60: 63. Authority is Cruel Part 5

One of the guards start spraying the crowd with something downright cruel. Ajax and Shaula try to block it from hitting the protesters, but more of the guards start using it. There are soon too many to block. There are a couple who spray directly at Ajax and Shaula’s faces. Masked individuals at these kinds of events should be dealt with first.

Ajax stands in front of Shaula with his hands blocking the direct streams of crowd control spray. He properly chills his hands so that as soon as the spray touches his hands, it freezes without splashing onto his clothes or hers.

The rest of the guards spray the reagent across the crowd in front of the effigy of Gwasila. It falls across a wide area. Ajax is unable to do anything about that. Luckily, the weapon is only sprayed for a few seconds. The guards wouldn’t want it to be carried by the wind back towards them.

Thanks to Ajax guarding the two of them, a minimal amount of the spray gets on their clothes or their skin. However, his two hands are covered in a layer of harshly burning ice. He quickly hides his hands from the guards. Shaula discreetly melts the spray off for him, letting it fall to the ground as a liquid.

It would be best not to let anyone notice his cold power. Hopefully if any of the guards do see what he just did, they’ll think of it as conventional magic, or a magic tool and nothing else. Ajax wonders if the spray itself is a magic or alchemical product. Whatever it was, it burned his hands and is even leaving a lingering feeling of pain.

However, his hands haven’t turned red in the slightest.

Within a few seconds, the pain disappears. But, from his testing, nothing should not be able to cause that kind of lingering pain on his skin. His healing factor would blunt the pain far faster than it would deal with the actual injury.

The spray’s effect on the counter protesters is more pronounced.

“M-My eyes!” One of them screams. Ajax notices people in the crowd screaming about their skin burning, their lungs burning, their eyes burning. Everyone starts fleeing the area around the effigy. Ajax and Shaula feel some of the aerosolized spray on their own faces.

The pain is surprisingly potent and lingers for a few seconds longer than it should, just like with Ajax’s hands.

“What the fuck is this stuff?” Shaula asks, feeling her face. Wherever she touches, the pain intensifies. Then, her face falls into slight panic. She realizes. If it feels like this for the two of them, what must it feel like for those without a healing factor? She finds her answer quite quickly as she hears the screaming and the agony around her.

The entire area becomes a mess as people start running away from the effigy.

“What kind of spray is it, Shaula?” Ajax asks while helping someone to their feet to prevent them from getting trampled by the stampeding crowd.

“I-I don’t know. I thought it was pepper spray, but… their skin isn’t turning red or anything. You can hear their screaming, right? That’s not the kind of pain that you’d get from pepper spray, it’s worse!” Shaula informs him, quite confused by the reaction of the counter protesters.

The people who seem to have been sprayed on their bare skin aren’t doing well at all. They’re weeping and sobbing. The ones who received the spray on their eyes are crying even harder in deep pain. They seem to be keeping their eyes open. Does even their eyelids closing cause them to agonize?

Shaula is trying to help some of those people who feel too much pain to close their eyelids. They seem to be unable to walk forward. They seem to be blind, yet unable to close their eyelids. She can’t understand them through their weeping. She looks into their eyes and notices that the veins in their eyeballs are quite visible.

She can even see their pupils reacting to the light. Is it hysterical blindness?

“My eyes! I-It’s like they’re being stabbed with hundreds of needles…” One of them says as she helps guide the young beastkin woman away from the effigy.

“Ajax! Help these three over here! They’re passed out! I’ll help those two over there.”

There are three people still in front of the effigy who are writhing on the ground and seizing unconsciously. There are two more people who are on the ground clutching their chests, having already vomited. Shaula moves towards them. They’re scratching at their chests as they try to deal with pain within their lungs.

Every moment they breathe is agony.

[Shit, they’ve breathed it in. The spray causes pain I think, but no injury as far as I can tell. They’re unable to deal with the pain directly within their lungs…] Shaula surmises to herself and Ajax, the only other person who could hear her whispers.

Ajax holds one unconscious, writhing person over his right shoulder, a short beastkin man, about twenty years old. Ajax picks up another young person with his left arm, holding him over his shoulder as well. The last is a beastkin woman with bob-cut, lime-green hair.

He bends down to carefully wake her up. He touches her hand; she wakes up in terror. 

Ajax lets her go. Her hands must have been sprayed so she’s far more sensitive to anyone touching there. She is fully awake now so he doesn’t need to pick her up.

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“Listen, you need to stand up and move away from this statue here, can you do that for me?” Ajax asks her. She tries to move away from him, but slowly starts realizing where she is. She gets her bearings, and follows Ajax away from the effigy, terrified. Her pain seems to be in her hands, her neck and her face.

Luckily, she hasn’t breathed any of it in and she hasn’t been sprayed in her eyes.

Ajax gets the three people away from the effigy, the last three people who are near it.

They move through the crowd of counter protesters. These people who were on the side have backed away from the statue after seeing the guards spray the protesters. Ajax and the three get away past the crowd to an area where there are other beastkin people in pain waiting for the pain to go away.

With all the counter protesters moved away from the effigy, there is nobody in front of it to stop the marchers. As a result, they and the guards move forward and close in on the effigy.

It is currently early evening.

Ajax places down the young men he’s carrying and the lime-green haired woman sits next to the two of them. He doesn’t know why she followed him this far, but from the look on her face, it seems like she’s in shock.

Shaula is already there. There are people nearby who are trying to wash the eyes of the people who have severe eye pain and psychosomatic blindness. However, the ones affected are refusing to have their eyes touch anything for now. She can do nothing except hope that their pain goes away as quickly as possible and their sight returns.

Shaula walks over towards Ajax. The two men on the ground next to him are still writhing in agony, but luckily still unconscious. He places them on their sides so that if they vomit or foam at their mouths, they won’t suffocate.

“What were they sprayed with? It’s like the cops hit them with pure uncut pain. Like something that would overstimulate their pain sensors…” Ajax tries to reason out what that was that the guards had used.

It is definitely a weapon unlike anything cops would use on Earth. It doesn’t burn people like pepper spray does, but it does make them feel like they’re burning. Washing it off wouldn’t do anything to help the victims, it would actually make them feel sharper pain.

A few of the counter protesters have already gone into shock. 

“These cops are huge assholes. Huge fucking scumbags.” Shaula’s expression is severe and angry as she speaks to Ajax.

If only she could knock them out right here, right now. If only she could kill them. But, she understands what Angelidis was trying to tell her. If this is what they’re willing to do today in public with no provocation, what would they do if they met any real kind of pushback?

The worst thing about their crowd control weapon is that anyone who hears about it in the news would think it was no big deal.

A weapon that inflicts pain, but causes no injuries? Shouldn’t that be perfect for protesters who are disturbing the peace? What could they be complaining about? Shouldn't they be glad the guards didn’t cut them down?

“Do you need any help, Shaula?” Angelidis asks. She, Dzan and Sigvor have walked over to this area to see if they could provide any assistance in taking care of these injured protesters. They didn’t recognize the sprays that the guards had pulled out, so they didn’t rush out behind Ajax and Shaula.

It was good that they didn’t, otherwise they would be the ones writhing in pure agony.

The guards have never used anything like that spray at previous marches. They would never have used something like that in the past either, especially towards people just standing in front of an effigy. They might as well be declaring a new war upon demihumans in Tritol.

“Jelli, can we get them to a hospital for their torment?” Ajax asks, with concern. Shaula’s face is down.

“...There’s a free clinic that might be working today. But, the main hospitals that use healing magic are run by the church. They won’t help without payment…”

“How much would they need? We have money!” Ajax tells her. However, Angelidis’ expression doesn’t improve one bit.

“Ajax… These are counterprotesters at a statue march. I can tell you that the church’s hospitals wouldn’t take any of them… On a day like today, they’ll definitely have guards waiting outside the hospitals to make sure they can’t get any help at all.”

“Shouldn’t we at least try!?” Ajax shouts. “Let’s go there and see!”

“There’s no need.” Someone that Ajax doesn’t recognize speaks up.

Ajax turns to see who it is. There are three people actually: Prisca, Sito and Cel. These are the three beastkin people who had warned them about the festival in the first place. They are here ready and willing to help the affected protesters.

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