Sora Knightengale's Story

"Talk? I don't play with my food. It's bad manners." She tilted her face with an exasperated expression. The atmosphere was silent for a second as her lower torso started to bulge with multiple contours and colors, slowly becoming protruding tentacles that were red: the length of a long arm pole and about half a human wide each.

Her tentacles extended as she tried to attack the Queen mercilessly, slamming her tentacle on his puny stature. Suddenly, a burst of light from a circle around them electrocuted one of her tentacles until it became limp. That didn't stop Serah though: she seemed to have no mentality or thought process to her attack. Her kagune simply regenerated, breaking through the seal after 7 of her tentacles became fried and regenerated immediately after.

Not to her surprise he easily dodged her combos, unscathed. She leapt once more this time aiming at Zero again with a giant leap forward, hoping to pierce him directly with her delicate hands. The ground around her turned wispy with smoke and was scorched in reaction to her reflexes. Her tentacles began to move a different direction and attempted to pierce Forth in half. She back-flipped as she caught herself with her left palm from the fall backwards. From a snarky yoyo hit from Zero, she seemed to regain her judgment and senses itself. She retracted herself from the seemingly overwhelming odds retrieving Rina's limp corpse from the ground beside the skirmish and began to execute the actual parts of her scheme.

She waited, and anticipated what the other two were going to do, and decided that even her the queen of vampires could not fight in such a weakened form. She broke the floor beneath her, breaking 4 layers of limestone, concrete, and even diamond, as a tomb with a secure lid decorated with a flower insignia was raised from the Earth itself. She used her kagune to pry off the lid as a staircase was revealed within the darkness. Steps could be heard from it, as if someone was ascending it as a silhouette emerged from the cloud of debris.

Forth

He sighed and frowned.

"There's so little civility to murder these days."

He stepped back and watched her try and fail to get at him. Like a wild dog she kept on him, not at all considering King was also on the attack. Forth had always thought little of him but he still had his uses. He was mechanically faster and trained for fighting simple enemies. For ten percent of the job he was superior in performance. For the rest the Magician's Alliance had put their faith in the queen. He didn't care what they wanted of him though. They thought they could control him and in some senses they were right. Their control was only good as far as their commands could foresee.

He knew she was the queen of the vampires, that much was made known. Who she was though was what he wanted to know. Corpses weren't the easiest sources of information after all. After a brief trade of attacks between the vampire queen and King the target smashed open the surprisingly expensive ground to reveal a secret tunnel. It seemed she was bringing in reinforcements to help her enforce the 'trap' part of the actual trap. What interested him however was the fact that she bothered to grab Rina's body. This action alone was more interesting than the entirety of the confrontation had been.


Forth had not been completely idle throughout the fight however. He had reached into his suitcase and retrieved three specialized grenades along with a couple regular ones just in case. The specialized grenades were designed to release a cloud of his Vampiric Retribution Powder when they exploded, covering everything in a wide radius with this dust which would burn continuously upon coming into contact with a vampire. In addition he had also loaded his shotgun with a special round, buckshot mixed with VR* Powder. When fired these rounds would do the same damage as regular buckshot with the added bonus of coating every shot with VR Powder for extra damage. If that wasn't enough the shots also put out a lot of excess VR Powder as well, covering targets in a slightly narrow cone in front of him with it.

Now it was time to put his plan into effect. He took one of the specialized grenades in his hand and pocketed the rest. Pulling the pin on the VR Powder grenade he tossed it right at the entrance of the coffin near where the vampire queen stood. Standing in position he then aimed his shotgun down the length of the staircase, timing his shot to go off with the explosion. His plan was simply enough to deny the woman a direction to dodge that wouldn't place her in direct danger.

If she stood still she'd get hit with the grenade's blast and set ablaze with a fire that would only burn hotter in proportion to the power of the vampiric essence. If she dodged into the stairway she'd take a direct blast from his shotgun which would put buckshot coated in VR Powder directly under her skin, the perfect place for an endlessly burning powder to stay in. If she dodged away from the coffin altogether then it would put her much closer to Zero, setting her up in an excellent position for a continued attack from him.


While he had no reservation towards shooting the queen of vampires dead right then, especially given her dim and especially childish behavior, the purpose of this maneuver of his was not specifically to kill her. What he was trying to do was to force her to drop Rina's body. If he could separate the body from her then his next shot was going right into Rina's head. There had to be a reason she wanted to retreat with the body in tow and he was determined to force her hand, giving him and King an advantage which he definitely wanted. After all, there was another coming up from the stairs and he was not keen on the possibility of having to reveal more of his powers than he wanted anyone to know.

Secrets were valuable after all. He wanted to find them, not reveal them to others.

(*-Vampiric Retribution Powder)

There wasn't much that would make her go through the trouble of bringing him back. Whatever the reason was, it must be something very important for the queen to summon one of her elite guard. Maybe he wasn't the only guard she summoned, he would have to wait to be sure. He walked stoically up the large set of stairs towards a small light at the top. There was a chance his queen also summoned Claire and if that was the case Sora feared for whoever the enemy was. There wasn't much that could stand against the Blue knight, Lightning fast Claire and the queen of the vampire's herself. He felt wrath at his hip, waiting to be unleashed on his queen's enemies. He spoke to his sword, attempting to calm it down a bit before it's thirst for blood was too great. He closed his eyes and focused, going into something like a trance. He threw his senses out like a web, tendrils everywhere so he could see what he would be popping up into. He could see his queen as well as her two enemies, which didn't seem like much at first glance. If she only had two enemies the she wouldn't be needing both him and Claire. That made him slightly sad that he wouldn't be able to see his old friend but he wasn't going to let that get to him. These enemies mustn't be weak if the queen needed his presence so he took another moment to assess the situation. He saw another form lying unconscious in the queen's arms. He linked a tendril to the queen's consciousness and he knew exactly what she wanted him to do. He also noticed the two enemies and where they were positioned relative to the queen. He saw that one was about to throw a grenade as well as had a gun out, attempting to force Serah either into the other enemy or into the waiting gun's range. Sora was now close to the top and he knew just what needed to be done.

As he took his last step out of the staircase, he pushed off the ground with his full strength, causing him to go spiraling forward in the blink of an eye. He grabbed the grenade mid air and threw it far into the back corner of the room. He quickly altered his fall in just the right way and drew his blade to smash away the freshly fired shell. Sora didn't bother to look back, knowing his queen would take care of the rest of the fight while he did what she called him to do in the first place. He took Rina from Sarah's arms and set her down on the floor. As he spoke a few words under his breath he could hear the queen fighting only feet beside him holding back both of her formidable foes. As he spoke his last words of condolences, he began going to work. He quickly and efficiently began removing the girls eyes, doing as his queen commands wasn't something he liked, but he knew nothing else. As the two enemies fighting Sarah tried their hardest to get past her, they could see somewhat what was happening. That only caused them to fight harder almost getting to Sora multiple times, only to be sent flying back by the queen. He wasn't sure how long Sarah could keep it up, but he was almost done and once his task was complete they would be able to escape. He had both eyes removed and He began to transfer them into his own, one at a time. It took a moment before he was able to see again and once he did all he could see was different shades of purple. It would take him years to get adjusted to how the eyes power worked, but the color would come back to normal within minutes. As the purple slowly shifted from his eyes, he could see that his queen was slightly worse for wear. He picked up Rina's body and shifted her over his shoulder, waiting for his queen's next order. He pulled up wrath in his right arm, waiting for what was to come next.