Author's Note: First off, I apologize for the slow turn out. Life has not been so kind to my writing time recently. To put it simply, juggling band, school, clubs, and college apps is pretty difficult for me often leaving me with very little time to do much outside of those four things. Now with the complaining out of the way, I plan on getting out as much content as I can because it may turn into some material for a friend’s game. But that doesn’t really matter because I just want to thank you all for reading Crimson Contact and I hope you enjoy the latest chapter!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Warm musty air hung in the dimly-lit cavern as several figures sat around different workstations tinkering away various activities.

At large wooden table deeply fixated on the seweg in front of him was a large sturdily-built man. The large scar slicing down from his sweaty forehead to his cheek over his left eye seemed to pulsate with frustration as he gingerly pulled various pieces from the seweg in front of him, placing them carefully on a cloth right next to him.

To his right leaning back dangerously on a rickety old wooden chair was a petite girl with a unnervingly cheerful grin on her face. As she kept tipping forwards and backwards, she gleefully counted the Io (currency) she had earned previously that day.

On the opposite side of the cavern were a young man and woman carefully adding and mixing several ingredients into vials. Although their conversation was (one-sidedly) intense barely a whisper came from the two.

Despite sitting in close proximity to one another, none of them spoke to one another. Only the ringing of work filled the gaps in sound.

After several moments of the same sounds, the girl, now bored, threw the bag of Io onto the table, disturbing the meticulously placed pieces of seweg and tools of the man with a scar.

Giving a slightly peeved look in the girl's direction, he carefully pushed the bag to the edge of his workspace and began reorganizing.

A look of disappointment covered the girl's face as she began tipping back in her chair again. Her white twintails dangled as she craned her neck back in search something else to do.

Surveying the spacious room, her eyes stopped on the pair intensely debating what to put next into their "stew" of ingredients.

"Roooooyaaaaaaa..." she lazily called out.

"What," came a curt response from the man.

"Tell me something interesting." She began tipping back even further.

"I'll kill you if you bother me again."

"Boooooo...."

Her chair continued tipping backwards quickly gaining momentum.

*THUNK*

It slammed into the ground, but completely unfazed by the experience, the girl continued to sit in the tipped chair staring at the earthen ceiling.

"Hah....... Where's C.C.?" she asked the man maintenancing a seweg.

"Making sure we can finish our job," he replied piecing the seweg back together. "Just be patient, they'll be back soon."

"But I'm boooorrrrrreed..... Maybe the package will start being fun again," she lethargically stated turning her gaze to one of the poorly lit tunnels leading out of the room.

A small spark of malicious intent flitted across her eyes.

"Kyuru...." the man said noticing the change in atmosphere.

"We can just rough it up a bit, right?"

"No."

"It's just a few cu—"

"—Kyuru" he curtly repeated. Tensing his grip on the now assembled seweg

"I was just joking Yir! ☆" Kyuru flung herself and the chair back into an upright position, balancing on the back legs.

"Mhmmm." Relaxing, he fell silent and began modifying the seweg.

Smiling at Yir, she stayed in that position until gravity pulled the chair back to earth.

"Ok nice talk...."

Kyuru began counting the number of rocks in the ceiling again.

Why is everyone being so boring...

Blowing a strand of hair out of her face, she began letting Rugkraft flow into her head.

"Ani—"

"—I'm sorry. Anir is currently not available for telepathic conversation. Please try again when she is not on watch out, sweetie," interrupted a pleasantly peeved voice.

"Waaaaaa.... You're all being boring." Still sitting in the overturned chair, Kyuru began sorting the ceiling rocks by color as she swung her legs like an upside down scuba diver.

Where's Crescent? she thought to herself, contemplating the future.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

In a battle-scarred study, two figures exchanged blows as a torrent of wind roared around them.

What the hell just happened!? the cloaked figure thought to itself.

Moments ago, it had knocked the somewhat boy around, but after delivering a solid hit to his head, he suddenly changed.

In just a few moments, the figure felt the a deep chill. Somewhere deep inside, it knew who it was in front of it. Who it was, that made it who it is.

"SO IT WAS YOU!" the figure spat out in disgust.

Undaunted, the boy continued to stare down the figure with emotionless eyes. Flourishing the seweg, he charged the figure.

"DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU TO HELL!"

Stabbing with a velocity faster than sound, the figure counterattacked the boy.

Instead of dodging the flurry, he shifted the seweg millimeters away himself and attempted to close the distance even more between the two.

After knocking the tip of the seweg down, the boy lunged at the figure.

SHIT!

Firing off a large portion of its seweg into the ground, the figure flew back from the inertia slamming into the window.

Cascading through the air with millions of razor blades cutting through its robes, the figure quickly fired off several successive shots back into the room.

The boy swiftly swatted the projectiles from the air like they were mere flies. Tensing his legs, he lept out of the window too to chase the figure.

"IDIOT!" the figure screamed as its eyes lit a pale blue.

From around it, the invisible shards of glass flew upwards towards the boy at an impressive speed.

"Vopust," the boy unemotionally said.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

His right eye lit with an artificial glow, before reverting back to normal.

In front of him, the glass stopped moving letting him easily slip through the sharp flecks.

Right as the figure hit the ground, its eyes glowed again. Landing on it's hands, it pushed off the ground leaving a pale blue sheen where its hands had been.

Spreading like a liquid, the sheen quickly covered the ground.

The boy tried landing, but was quickly thrown off his feet as he seemed to fall horizontally towards the figure.

Expecting this, the figure raised its seweg to where he was "falling."

Undaunted, he contorted his body to avoid impalement. Reaching out with his right hand, he attempted to grip the figures face as his eye glowed again.

The figure's mask tore off as it turned its body, barely dodged the boy's hand. Not letting the chance go, it spun using the momentum to deliver a sharp backhand to his head.

Caught by the blow and thrown off balance as he left the sheen-covered ground, he tumbled for a bit before repositioning for another strike.

He stopped.

Underneath the hood of the figure, was the nostalgic face of a beautiful girl.

It was Noelle, except something was different about her.

It was as though hidden scars surrounded her and an empty loneliness enveloped her entire being.

Expecting another attack she tensed and prepared her seweg, her eyes glowing a dangerous pale blue.

After a few moments of staring each other down, the girl spoke noticing the situation.

"You weren't expecting this, were you, Shinku."

Shinku continued to watch the her not showing any change.

"It's ok, I wouldn't have either if I were you," she continued. "But that doesn't matter. I'm going to make sure you suffer regardless."

She poised her seweg like a fencer, the blade now releasing a pale blue luminescence.

"Let me carve the pain you gave me into your flesh." Appearing behind her in the air were several pale blue circles with intricate patterns of shapes and designs.

From the middle of each one, a thin, pointed sliver of pellucid material appeared and shimmered crystallic light.

Soon, eight elongated rapiers hovered around her as she stood to strike.

“Don’t die too quickly.” Flitting forward, Noelle charged Shinku as the blades flew forward as well.

The first blade was deflected to the ground behind Shinku where it dissipated as well as the second blade. But the next blades came together at once from different angles forcing him leap backwards.

As the blades disappeared, they reformed a ring around Noelle again as she continued her dash towards Shinku. Getting close enough for a lunge, she flourished her blade and all of the crystal rapiers converged on Shinku at once.

For a split second, Shinku’s eye lit up causing the crystals to shatter. Despite this, the two continued to arc their blades at each other through the cold veil of tiny mirrors.

Their blades brushed emitting a small shriek as they slipped past one another towards their target.

Noelle’s seweg grazed Shinku’s face, but his embedded itself deep into her shoulder. Blood oozed out of both of their wounds, painting the weapons crimson with blood

Crying out in pain, Noelle leapt backwards dislodging the blade. But Shinku chased after her landing another three successive stabs on Noelle’s other arm and legs.

Noelle lost her grip on the seweg and it flew several feet away from her. Unable to land properly, she crumpled to the ground. Unable to move her legs, she began crawling towards the seweg.

No. I can still fight. I need to fight. I need to kill him.

Noelle reached for the seweg just out of her grasp. Shinku mercilessly planted his seweg through her outstretched hand.

“GAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!”

Blood flowed out onto the blade pooling on the ground.

Mustering her last bit of strength she grasped the embedded seweg with her other hand. Her eyes lit up more intensely than before, sending an thick blue pulse through the blade into Shinku’s hand.

His eyes shot into the back of his head as his entire body began to twitch and convulse violently. Falling to the floor, he lay twitching for a few moments before calming down.

Noelle lay there, still grasping the blade, as she watched the motionless body in front of her. Her breaths were ragged and raspy, and her vision was beginning to fade as the adrenaline left her body.

“Go….die….now…..” Passing out, Noelle and Shinku lay facing each other, both with peaceful expression on their faces.

Off in the distance a crow cried as the day came to an end the two lay still in the middle of the abandoned synasion.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“*sigh* What do we have here?” Kyosheon looked at the battle-scarred scene in front of him. Holes pocked the courtyard as well as the remains of a window and some form of liquid. In the middle of it all lay two badly injured figures of Shinku and Noelle

I let him out for one day and something like this happens? Gah… I can’t let him run off on his own then.

Walking over to the two he carefully picked both of them up and carried them out of the synasion.

“You, little girl, need to not pick fights you aren’t ready for,” he reprimanded the limp Noelle.

“And you!" Looking at Shinku, he seemed to tense up. " ….I still don’t know about you, and that makes me uneasy.”

Shinku made an expression as though he swallowed something sour, while on the contrary Noelle’s face distorted for a brief moment before relaxing.

I better get her back before she goes at it again. And I need to make sure he doesn’t wake up again.

Concern took Kyosheon’s face as he studied the faces of the two he was carrying. Neither of them seemed ready to return from the dreamland, so he continued to carry them down the street, receiving strange looks from the few pedestrians still milling about.

“Ha…. I’m too old for this.”

He looked up as though the twilight sky would provide him with some comfort to his dilemma.

Tomorrow’s not going to be a fun day....