Age of Darkness (17 page)

Keimaro lowered his sword at the sight of
the man and turned to face him, sensing that Yuri was drawing back. “Who are you?”

“My name is Z,” the man said with a small
smile before he looked at the singed grass and destroyed lawn and slapped his
forehead with frustration. “My, my, Yuri! He is our guest! Why did you have to
confront him in such a way?”

“The punk asked for it.” Yuri snarled, not
taking his eyes off of Keimaro.

“You want round two, dog-breath?” Keimaro
snapped.

“Round one isn’t over until you’re done
breathing, Hayashi scum,” Yuri retorted.

Z watched the two of them bicker for a
moment. He tried to speak up, but their words overlapped his. Z raised his
eyebrow at their rudeness. Then he snapped his fingers and conjured a giant red
hammer into his hands. He gripped the handle tightly and began to swing it, red
light streaming behind the head of the hammer. The hammer slammed into both
boys with a single swing and sent them flying backward, skidding along the
ground.

Keimaro rolled across the lawn and landed
on his back. The blow hadn’t really hurt as much as it had confused him. He was
dazed, not sure what had just happened. His vision was blurred white, but
nothing really hurt except for his head. He leaned forward, rubbing his
forehead, and something smacked onto his chest. He glanced down, and his heart
thudded when he saw it was an odd, slimy, green substance that was moving
abnormally around his body.

“Eh?” he exclaimed, beginning to struggle,
but the odd substance curled around him, expanding until it had covered his
entire body. The boy watched as the red-haired man snapped his fingers once
more and the green substance solidified, trapping Keimaro completely so that he
was incapable of moving. “Tch, stop your tricks, old man!” he snarled,
attempting to break the foreign solid, but it was just like the substance that
the man with the glasses had used.

“Old man? I hardly look old.”

“But you are old,” Yuri muttered, stuck in
the same situation as Keimaro, though he seemed much more calm. He leaned back
so that he was lying on the soft grass, apparently getting settled in since he
seemed to know they would be there for a while.

“Shut up, Yuri,” Z said with a scoff and
put his hands in his pockets, giving Keimaro a look of reassurance. “Don’t
worry; we aren’t here to hurt you. Actually, we just wanted to get your
attention and to see if you were the real thing. The walls of my mansion are
fortified with a gigantic ward so that no one can get through. In fact, most
people can’t even see my house.”

“Huh?” Keimaro muttered.
Looks like
Gavin’s rumor was true
.

“You see,” Z explained, “when one looks at
the gateway of my mansion, one sees only the gates to an abandoned, eerie, old
warehouse. In fact, the rumor around here is that it’s haunted. No one dares to
come near it. You must’ve seen people with shifty eyes when you were walking
close to it, right? It isn’t exactly the liveliest place from a distance. You
can’t see anyone who is walking inside of the ward either. The gate itself is
impenetrable by most humans. But I remember you from earlier today. You walked
by, and we locked eyes. You saw me. That’s when I knew that you had arrived in
Bassada. So, I sent Yuri to go and fetch you. Instead, he brought back your
friend as bait so you would come to us. We want to offer you a proposition.”

“I don’t want to make a damn deal with any
of you people. I have my own goals and—”

“We have the same goals,” Z said with a
chuckle, “the destruction of this corrupt government, the assassination of the
king, and the eradication of the Bount organization. You hate them as much as
we do, correct?” He looked Keimaro in the eyes now with his smile wiped clean
off his face. His eyes were deprived of their former cheer, which had been
replaced with apathy and seriousness.

Keimaro stared at Z for a moment, gulping.
Who were these guys? They hated the Bount organization? They all had weird
magical powers, too, just like him. Were they former Bount members? No, maybe
they were Bount organization members who were trying to bait him! He couldn’t
be sure if these guys were for real. But, when he looked around, he found his
answer. He saw Yuri’s head lower at the very mention of the Bounts. The girl
with the rifle had looked away and was tightening her grip on her weapon. The
man with the glasses was touching her shoulder.

“No.” A look of surprise came across Z’s
face, but Keimaro spoke once more. “I hate them much more than any of you ever
could.”

The smile returned to Z’s face, and he
nodded. “We are a resistance group that has formed against the Bount
organization. Yuri here is the first person to ever kill a member of the Bount
organization, the strongest terrorist group in the entire world. They contain
men and women with capabilities beyond human comprehension, and they have
mastered their abilities to the point where they are able to shift continents,
change nature, destroy armies, and obliterate nations. Three Bounts have been
assigned to this city, which is why we are here to hunt them down. We come to
you today because we are sure that you recognize their names: Tobimaru Hayashi,
Hidan, and Junko.”

Keimaro’s ears pricked up at the very sound
of their names. He despised all of them so much. No one would understand. They had
taken everything from him. He had sworn that he would destroy them all. Mai was
probably dead after all of these years; he hadn’t seen her or even heard a
single mention of her existence since that day. His eyes were glowing a bright
red, and flames were beginning to flicker around his shoulders. “Yeah, I know
them. And I’m going to be the one to kill them. I’ll crush them with my own two
hands. I don’t need your help with anything, old man.”

“Stop calling me old. And how is your
disguise as a member of the Royal Guard? Soon the Bounts will be forming a plan
with the king of Bassada, and they will be working to end all freedom on the
continent. Humans will be ruled underneath the Bounts. They’ll gain power
politically, and soon an army will be at their disposal. Is that what you want?”

“I’ll stop them before—”

“You were hardly able to fend off Yuri in
his human form!” Z snapped. “And you believe that you can handle three full-fledged
Bount members and a whole empire by yourself? Don’t be such a loner, Keimaro.
You have your goals, correct? I recall them being to get your revenge on Faar,
kill the Bounts, and save a particular someone. Your little sister, right?”

Keimaro’s eyes widened at the mention of
Mai, and the flames intensified, beginning to spread outward. “How the hell do
you know about Mai? You know where she is, don’t you? You sick—” A glob of
green substance smacked across his mouth and solidified instantly. He tried to speak,
but it came out muffled.

Z smiled at Keimaro and winked. “That’s
much better. You believed that your sister was dead this whole time without
even proof? My, my, sounds as if you’re giving up on a member of your own
family. How pessimistic. She’s alive. The Bounts intend to use her for
something that is unknown. My group will be the ones to confront the Bounts and
the king. You can either be a part of our operations or sit back and watch us
fight the battles that you want to be involved in. Fight with us. In return, we
will ensure your sister’s safe return.”

Keimaro’s breathing slowed, and he began to
calm down. Her safe return? She was alive. All of this time, she had been okay.
He wondered what she looked like after all of these years. She was eight now,
wasn’t she? These people seemed strong. He wasn’t in a particularly good
situation to go against them either. Gavin was unconscious, Yata was captured,
and he was stuck surrounded by people who could quite easily defeat him.
Looks
like it’s not just me and Yata anymore.

The flames began to die down around him,
and he closed his eyes. The green material vanished as if it had disintegrated
into thin air. He looked up at Z and worked his jaw. “I’ll work with you on the
condition that I am the one who gets to kill Junko.”

Z smiled. “Of course.”

“Where is Yata?”

“Unconscious inside the mansion. We will
provide you with training—”

“I don’t need training,”

“Straight to it then? We will go over the
plan soon. Can you walk?”

“I’m not hurt,” Keimaro said, pushing
himself to his feet. He swayed, wincing at the sharp pain in his ribs.
I’ll
be fine. I just need to rest a bit.

Z extended his hand to the girl and boy at
his side. “This here young lady is Lena. She is an expert with the rifle,
explosives, and technological advances. She studied amongst gnome engineers for
most of her life. She’s quite good with hand-to-hand combat as well and doesn’t
have any magical capabilities. But, she makes up for it with her talent and
hard work.”

Keimaro nodded his head and blinked a few
times, his face turning red. “Uh, sorry for … hitting you with fire earlier,
Lena,” he said, holding out his hand in the attempt at a handshake. He didn’t
expect her to shake it—and, of course, she didn’t.

“I’ll make you pay for it later,” Lena snapped,
one hand on her hip as the other brushed some ashes from her shoulder.

“This is my son, Noah. He is quite the
smart kid, if I do say so myself. He is mastering the same type of magic that I
do. Some call it bending; some call it conjuring. We create anything that we
want out of thin air using the colors that we can see before us. If we see
green, the conjured magic is green. It really depends on what we concentrate
on. It’s quite a strong attack but focuses more on defense and utilization than
offense, which was why you were able to easily defeat him. He needs to work on
a few things in order to maximize his proficiency with this style of magic, but
overall, I suppose, he’s all right.”

“Sorry for punching you in the face.”

“No, it’s completely understandable. We
were enemies at the time, after all,” Noah said with a warm smile, adjusting
his cracked glasses with a single poke at the lenses. “I look forward to
working with you.”

“Likewise,” Keimaro lied.

“And this is Yuri. He is the king of a
faraway city known as Horux and is, as you witnessed earlier, a werewolf. He is
capable of transforming at will, and he has a few tricks up his sleeve in
addition. He was the first person to kill a member of the Bount organization
when they invaded Horux, just as they are doing to Bassada. You two will be
working together.”

Keimaro and Yuri locked gazes for a moment,
looking into the red glow of each other’s eyes, never having seen someone else
like them. Immediately, they understood each other from a single glance: the
pain, the hatred and anger mixed with agony that derived from memories of the
past. They glanced away, and Keimaro watched as Noah began to walk toward Gavin’s
unconscious body to pick him up.

Z nodded at Keimaro. “We will walk you to
Yata. Meanwhile, I want to debrief you on how you will contribute to our
revolution. A revolution doesn’t happen in one day. As lucky as you were to get
your position as a member of the Royal Guard so easily, not everything will
happen so smoothly.” He began to walk across the singed grass toward his
mansion. “We have many assassins and willing warriors who all share a piece of
our circle of hatred for the Bounts. But, in order to eliminate the threat of
an entire army, we must first eliminate Faar. Do you understand?”

“Yeah,” Keimaro said as they arrived at the
door and began to walk in. The boy’s eyes widened when he saw the largest room
possible in history, bigger than even the king’s throne room. The ceiling
stretched higher than he had thought possible with floating candles that
magically bounced about in the air, levitating. A winding stairway led to many
different floors in the giant tower-like structure. The inside of the house was
shaped more like a tower than the mansion it had looked like on the outside.
Rooms were located on a platform that circled around the room, creating entire
floors. This winding stairway consisted of only floating steps with two
railings that spun around the structure, leading to the very top.
Magic
.

“I understand that you will be living in the
castle for the time being, but you will surely have plenty of time at night to
come and be here, correct? So, please, treat this place as you would your home,”
Z said with a nod, walking forward through what seemed like crowds of people.

Keimaro saw literally hundreds of boys and
girls, young and older, walking around everywhere, fitting inside of this
mansion.
Each of them is an assassin?
he wondered. They all hated the
Bount organization. How could this be? There were so many of them. Could the
Bounts have affected this many people? He bumped into a few of them as he
walked past and glanced at Z. “Where’s Yata?”

“He’s fine,” Z said and walked to the far
side of the massive room, past many of the boys and girls. He stood on a large
blue platform that seemed to be made of some type of glittering, soft, padded
material and looked more like some kind of elevator than anything else. He
waved his hand, indicating for Keimaro, Lena, and Yuri to follow. “Noah will
take your friend to the infirmary. I’m assuming that your friend will be
staying with us?”