Alkalians (49 page)

Dante, opening his hand to let the
wind blow away the leaf bits he drops, replies, “I don’t think that
is any of your business, Ryan. I’ve been competing hard in the last
few days, and today I wanted a small break.”

“
Aw, don’t get grouchy,
Dante, I was just asking. Hey, how about we duke it out ourselves?
I’ve got a blue badge, you’ve got green. It won’t take long, I’m
sure.”

“
No thanks. I’ve got
enough of a high score. Four hundred and eighty-five, to be exact.”
Dante walks over to the tree, sits down, and gets out his utensils
to begin smoking.

Ryan, frowning, shrugs and stands
there for a moment. He then tries a different topic, removing his
glasses to reveal his blue eyes and saying, “So, I bet you’ve heard
about Irene, right? The new rumor going around?”

Dante gets aggressive at Ryan’s
statement about his sister, but hides it with a monotone response.
“Of course. She was found on the doorstep of her cabin, beaten and
bloodied by some unknown assailant.”

“
Oh, no, no, not that
piece of news. I mean, everyone should know about that! I’m talking
about a different kind of rumor.”

“…
Then no, I can’t say I
have. The only rumors I’ve heard have been ones involving Matt or
Cain.”

“
Ah, right, of course.
You’re probably really busy in that area. Okay, I’ll tell you it
myself. It seems that a few nights ago, just before last night, in
fact, Irene got a little frisky.
Too
frisky.”

Dante isn’t too surprised or
concerned, puffing out smoke from his nostrils when he remarks,
“What was it this time, abusive drinking, wild flirting, or rowdy
behavior? I already know she’s doing them.”

“
Ah, but this time,” Ryan
explains, “she did all three, to the extreme! Apparently, she was
at a party that night, an all girl’s party, when she got rather
rough in her flirting, suggesting some, heh, naughty things to the
other girls. And then, she convinced one of them to get naughty
with her, if you know what I mean.”

Dante’s heart skips a
beat, his action to inhale a puff of his cigarette stopped
half-way. His eyes wide and voice cracking, he asks, “She
did
what
?”

“
Yes, yes, I know you
can’t conceive your sweet sister doing such a thing, but I got this
news from reliable sources. As much as I would like imagining it, I
couldn’t know for sure what she and her partner did the rest of the
evening. But I’m sure it would have been delightful to
watch!”

Through great struggle, Dante manages
to withdraw most of his emotions, except for the sense of a
backdraft behind a door, waiting for the door to open and be
released. He finishes his smoking in silence, stands up, drops the
cigarette and rubs it out, and then says, “Ryan. May I ask where
you were, last night?”

“
Last night? Uh, I was at
the casino for some time, sexually harassing some girls, before…!
Whoa, whoa, hang on, I know what you’re asking here. I assure you,
I had nothing to do with what happened to your sister,
nothing
! I mean, I like
having my way with the women, you know, but I would never,
never
do anything to
them like someone did to Irene!”

“
I somehow doubt you are
incapable of such a thing. I’ve heard, and seen, you get rather
carried away in fighting a female student. Perhaps you may have
gone too far, last night?”

“
Well, uh, okay, sometimes
I do, but I didn’t even
see
Irene anywhere, last night!” He reconsiders his
statement under the eagle eye of Dante, and tries again. “Okay, I
did see her, of course. But only at the casino, I swear! Just ask
the other officers, they’ll vouch for me.”

“
That would be a waste of
my time. Ever since Matt’s revolution began, most student officers
run when they see me coming. I heard that my sister had wounds on
her that suggested she had been cut or stabbed. And, if I recall
correctly, your battle morph uses blades, doesn’t it?”

“
You, you’re not
accusing
me
of
that, are you!? I’m telling you, I was nowhere near the scene, last
night. It wasn’t me!”

“
That’s hard to claim,
since it was among the senior cabins and you are senior. I can see
it now. Irene wandering back to her cabin in the middle of the
night, with you stalking her. You stop her outside her apartment,
challenge her to a fight, she accepts. You somehow overwhelm and
defeat her, but you are so crazed over fighting a member of the
opposite sex you forgot to stop your swinging when she demorphed.
And when it was over, you just left her there, went to your cabin,
and called it a night.”

Ryan is speechless, gaping
at him, before he objects, “Are you serious here!? Even
I
wouldn’t believe that!
How could I defeat Irene, one of the most feared fighters around
here, in a duel?”

“
Simple. She was
intoxicated. That’s the most logical reason of how you would have
pulled it off, and why you were so confident in confronting her.
When she morphed, she couldn’t fight, and you just had your way
with her. That sound right to you?”

“
Gah, I, I, no, of course
not! For the last time, man, I did nothing to your damned sister.
It wasn’t me!!”

“
I’m afraid, with that
kind of tone and attitude, you are failing to convince me, Ryan.
Besides, who else here on campus would have any reason to treat a
woman so savagely, like that? All the evidence is right there, and
it all points to
you
. I suppose there’s nothing more to discuss, then. I’ll just
be on my way to the university, and report what I suspect to an
officer or professor. Perhaps Professor Serpanz may be in the gym
yet.”

Panic and desperation
glaze over Ryan’s eyes. Flicking on his sunglasses, he snarls, “Oh
no, you’re not going anywhere to be falsely accusing me, Dante
Goros! No matter how much you care for that wretched sister of
yours, or how much you believe me, I
know
I am innocent of her
bloodshed!” He steps up in front of Dante to block him off, then
morphing into his tall, blue-armored, four-armed Shiva Swordsman,
rapiers and cutlasses sprouting from his hands, and waves them
defiantly as he roars, “Rather than the authorities, you’ll be
going to the
infirmary
, instead!”

***

When Ryan morphed and challenged him,
the door opens, and the backdraft, Dante’s inferno, breaks out in a
blaze when he morphs and attacks Ryan without warning, dashing
forward and leaping up to cut a few times through his left knee
with the fiery orange katana in his right hand before kicking off
him with another thrust of air balance. Ryan, unprepared for such a
swift response, can only fall over grunting with his crippled knee
while Dante back-flips and sticks a landing a few yards away.
Sitting up to glare back at the smaller Swordsman, he then, rather
than trying to stand, remains sitting, his legs crossed before him,
hovers a few feet above the ground on air balance, and propels
himself at Dante, his four sabers prepared to stab and
slash.

When the blades meet him, swinging and
stroking past each other in fluid, mesmerizing coordination, they
try to catch and shred him. However, as swift as they are, Dante is
swifter, parrying the rapiers, jumping over the cutlasses, overall
weaving and dodging the flurry with agile use of his air balance.
Ryan, ever furious, presses on in his assault, confident that if he
keeps the pressure on him he wouldn’t be able to counter him and
eventually trip up to become wounded by his swords.

Instead, to his surprise, Dante
suddenly lashes out with a rising stroke of his sword, and a
powerful gust of wind crashes into him, not dealing any damage but
otherwise flinging him up and away. At the peak of his launch, Ryan
is baffled of how Dante did that when he sees him appear above him,
and he looks stupefied as the katana slices over his chest, leaving
streaks of green wounds, before another thrust of air stomps him,
bashing his body back into the ground.

Ryan, for a moment lying
sprawled on his back, is more confused than angry at what happened.
Since when had Dante gotten so good with air balance? Sitting up,
he spots him again a few yards away, the amber katana held before
him in his ruby armor, his ivory face stone-cold and his golden
eyes on fire. Shaking his baffled thoughts out of his head, he
growls while resetting his hovering air balance, and shouts, “Okay,
wise guy, let’s see you dance past
this
!” With his sapphire energy
blades, all four then shaped as double-edged glaives, he sends
himself into a wild spin, becoming an azure, razor-sharp twister
closing in upon Dante.

As fearsome and ferocious as his
twister attack is, it is also brief when Ryan has to stop himself
after a few seconds, his eyes blinking and helmed head bobbing as
he fights off dizziness. Once recovered he looks around, enraged
that he had again failed to wound, even scratch, him, but can’t
find Dante anywhere. Puzzled for a moment, trying to figure out
where he could have gone, the answer hits him just as Dante does,
dropping down from above and behind him with great speed and force,
his katana ripping through Ryan’s spine in a gush of yellow
energy.

Brought down to the ground from the
heavy slash, Ryan gawks from the severe damage, feeling the vital
wound thrumming up-and-down him like a harp’s string, and is again
not ready for more of Dante’s attacks when he launches himself
airborne, his blade rising to sever Ryan’s two left arms cleanly,
drifts and turns around above him, and drops again to chop through
the two right arms.

Even more stunned, and
horrified, by the loss of his arms, Ryan knows he is as good as
beaten and should demorph then. But before he can, Dante mutters,
“
Seppuku
,” before
driving his katana, reverse-gripped in his left hand, into Ryan’s
abdomen, spins to tear him open in a burst of dark orange energy,
enlarges the sword between two hands, thrusts backwards into the
open wound, Ryan bending over from the deep stab while the wound
bled red, and pulls it out in the same motion as the demorph flash
blooming behind him.

***

Falling over on his side, his numb
arms reaching for his clenched abdomen, Ryan grimaces through
labored breaths, horrified of how he had been ripped apart. After
he gets up to his knees, the hot sweat that streaks his brow turns
cold when the katana of energy stops short of his neck, holding him
in place as he flinches and looks over his askew glasses to Dante
looming before him.

His facial expression as reserved as
ever, Dante’s quiet voice floats over Ryan, but anger is yet
present in the tone of his words. “Whether or not your gossip about
her is true, I won’t believe any of it until my sister tells me
herself. And as for last night, you can forget about it.” When
Ryan’s look of fear becomes quizzical, he reiterates, “Yes, you
heard me right. I’ve thought it over, and perhaps you are telling
the truth. You don’t have to worry about me accusing you of harming
Irene. Now, go, and be on your way. You may want to head for the
infirmary and get a bed before it’s crowded, this evening.” Still
with a puzzled expression, Ryan nonetheless nods, gets back on his
feet, and trots away from Dante still in morph, across the field
towards the university far in the distance.

Only when his beaten opponent becomes
a speck in the distance does Dante demorph, yet staring at the
speck while he broods over what he had, and would later, do. What
could be a better way to give him up as the scapegoat for his
sister’s attack the other night than to convince him he wouldn’t
turn him in? True enough, he wouldn’t turn him in, as he had told
him. But that doesn’t mean someone else won’t.

A few words from his colleagues would
be all it would take to get the whole campus buzzing about the
possibility that Ryan was the culprit, and then it wouldn’t be long
before officials came for him. His arrest should effectively kill
off any more rumors or concerns over his sister, thus allowing the
student community to focus again on the conflict between Matt and
Cain. That’s what he was hoping would happen, at least.

A light gust blows leaves off the tree
nearby, and when the different colors of them drift by Dante grabs
the first yellow leaf that crosses him. He stares at the leaf for a
moment, having his many feelings and thoughts at the moment pressed
down into it. Then, with one last emotion weighing his heart, Dante
uses his lighter rune to set the leaf aflame, the golden yellow
turning to ashen black when it burns like paper down to his
fingers.

Chapter 12

A Mixing of Finalists

***

The next day marks the end of the
Royale Project. After school hours, students flock in the halls of
the university to deliver their final scores to volunteering school
staff at counters. If any got one hundred or more points, they pass
with perfection, and the four highest scorers of each badge color
would enter the tournament finals. Many of the students are excited
and anxious to know who the finalists will be, with rumors,
predictions, and boasts already echoing through the college’s
corridors.