Lunaire POV
The fight with Eridani may have been over, but the scars that he left on us all persisted. Ten days after his defeat, those of us who were captured were treated with some of us even quitting soon after recovering.
The Elementals and especially Drippy were both put under heavy criticism with the public wondering if they were unable to protect us, how would they be able to protect the people? Eridani's convoy disappearing with almost no trace didn't help either. Nevertheless, Drippy handled it as best he could with much more security being added to the next specialists to come. Classes restarted soon enough. We managed to show off our skills and passed our test with flying colors. I wish I could describe the ceremony, but I was too inside my head to take note of it. As we piled on with our green graduation uniforms, we took our medals as we swore our new oaths to the public to hear.
"I promise to use my elements in service of Terra to and use it to help the citizens on her great land. I promise to devote my life to bring my light to this world to help make it better for future generations. As deputies, we promise to take on even greater challenges and as we follow the paths of those who came before and protect those who couldn't protect themselves."
And even amongst the sound of the reporters and pictures, the color soon faded away into nothing. A gray monotone enveloped the scene with everything stopping to a dreading crawl. I couldn't even make sense of the whole thing, only looking to a Mai whose body convulses as a shadowy silhouette of me soon envelops her in a creepy version of voice started to appear.
"But you couldn't protect them, could you? You didn't even try."
"It was for the greater good," I once again repeat in my mind.
"Oh yes, because you think that facing a guy tens of times stronger was worse than having them deal with you?" another shadow said, taking over Deon.
I tried thinking of some answer, but as the shadows closed in, as the chants grew all the louder until like clockwork, I wake up in a cold sweat, right in the middle of my first mission as a Deputy.
When I journeyed to become a specialist, it was in an attempt to master my element and finally not let these voices control me. Good news, I accomplished the latter; the problem was the only voices I could hear were my own. Eridani tested both our limits and our bonds, and when the chips were down, I left my team to fend for themselves. And even if my element was on the fritz, I knew enough to know that any friendship we could have ever had was now down the toilet. Either way, our morale was still higher than usual, so much so that we even pulled straws to choose our first mission.
For safety precautions, our "training" wasn't exactly over. Every time a specialist gains a rank, they get a "cool-down period," where we are restricted to the lowest level missions for our safety as we gained experience. Combine that and the Elemental's uneasiness with the public, any mission we picked was going to be relatively easy. So I picked the safest mission I could, guarding a shipment of harmless toys on route to our destination. The application seemed harmless enough, though I couldn't exactly make heads or tails on the guy. He was lost more on the skinny side with light brown skin, blond hair, and green eyes. He looked harmless enough, a little paranoid though, either way, I was too tired to question much.
Once I entirely took notice of the bumpy ride, I saw Brandon doing some attempting some one-finger push-ups and Aphele playing with the piece of metal he summoned in our last fight. About every minute in deep concentration, he would turn the small lump into a variety of shapes. While we're in the back of the truck, Deon was up top as a bird's eye view while Mai rode shotgun. They both took notice of my sudden gasp and reacted accordingly.
"Bad dream?" Aphele says with caution.
"Yeah...something like that; are we nearly there," I say silently.
"Nope, we still have half way to go, and I've got about 200 more push-ups to do before that," he says energetically.
"Good luck on that," I say, preparing to catch some more sleep.
But then out of nowhere, an ominous feeling soon took over as on instinct my body responded.
"Get down!," I say while using my shadows to pull them to me like the side of the truck got punctured by a black tendril!
The sheer force was enough to send us crashing to the ceiling and trashed back down. Once we got are bearings, we soon saw four hooded figures in violet garb take note of their surroundings. With one of them having a crest that froze me solid. Because with the sight of that italicized double P, I saw the group responsible for my element: the Phantom Pirates. Fortunately, my friends didn't share my reaction. Aphele and Brandon both fought with expert speed and reaction as Brandon displayed a Joey Dropkick that nearly sends him through the truck! At the same time, Aphele trapped another in a metal blindfold before throwing them down the subsequent hole of their making. Our counter-ambush was quickly adapted as one of the pirates started to hold both of them off. The remaining pirate got to work as he phased into a crate and started pulling toys. That relatively wacky image was just enough to wake me out of my stupor, realizing I was about to let my team have all the risk. Instinctively I tackled the man at full speed!
Reflexively, we both phased through the truck, but at the last second, I controlled what was solid and what wasn't as my solid hand pulled me back just enough to release us both. As the pirate sank to the floor, I took in my new surroundings, whipping winds, blaring sunlight and sounds of conflict assaulted my senses as I was face to face with a steep drop and tons of hard rock on a cliff. Once I adapted, I noticed that in our struggle, I somehow secured what they are trying to steal: a slightly damaged Golxzy, the angelic imp doll in all of its chokingly cute glory, with a strange green object poking inside of it. Too bad I didn't get the chance to explore further, but All I heard was Deon struggling. I stashed it away, and as soon as I got up, Deon was probably doing the best out of all of us. Even outnumbered 3 to one, he was holding them off with a barrage of lighting and light. Still, he was almost about to be knocked off. Using my element, I focused my shadows on creating footholds for me while a couple of tendrils weaved in between the car and effectively threw one pirate through the truck and sent tumbling down on the ground.
I was about to try and overpower the rest of them with a wild whip, but they managed to sidestep out of the way as one of them seeped his darkness through the roof of the truck and used it to grab my head and slam my head so hard the metal dents. Deon, with his focus, interrupted, eventually had his shield shattered, and was also tied up by the same pirate.
Utter dread developed my entire being as panic started to petrify me. But before I could once again let my shadow envelop me, twin blasts of energy knocked our captor onto the ground. I questioned who could have saved us, only to see that our employer was not our savior. Carrying a much more confident look and a futuristic gun with golden energy lines running through it. With only one pirate left, the two combatants stared each other down. The pirate using bits of shadows used the surrounding rock faces to send a volley rock right for him, but the employer's gun morphed slightly into a much more slicker gun as he was able to destroy some of them with clean precision whole dodging those he couldn't. With an evasive roll, he managed to line up a clean shot, but the pirate summoned a wall of shadow to guard. Deon not taking any chances uses the opportunity to reflect ray a shot to the head, which messed up his concentration enough for one last blast. Too bad, the pirate in a last-ditch effort used his element to destroy our upper right hover pad as soon enough the entire truck was sent spiraling off the edge of the cliff before the rocky forest below!
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I must have fallen unconscious during the fall because our late afternoon had turned into a dwindling sunset. A quick checkup later, and it looked like none of us had any particularly bad wounds, with the only real parting gift of the pirates being an ominous stigma planted on the truck that no one could remove, only one problem persisted.
"Good news: Between the fall, the boosters, and our little counter-attack, it's going to take them a couple of hours to regroup. Bad news: the truck is a complete mess, with no fuel and a weird black mark, and any help we can get us a couple of hours away. You guys were money well spent," said our employer.
"My question is what the hell could they possibly want, there just a bunch of toys, " Brandon said wonderingly.
"I say we ask our underpaying employer, " I say in suspicion.
"What do you mean," said our coy employer.
"I know how the pirates operate; they don't steal something unless it's worth stealing, and once they plan it out, it's relentless. And something tells me whatever's inside this little doll is expensive and illegal," I say questioning as I walked towards him.
"One I didn't pay you to play detective and two, you ever think that these toys were you know valuable."
"Well, I'm not risking my life on a toy, and considering this one, you wouldn't mind if I..."
He then snatched the doll without a second thought, as he said in anger.
"You're trying to kill yourself, you crazy bit-."
Realizing his fall in composure and that he was outnumbered 5 to 1, he spilled his guts.
"Might as well come clean since we die anyways. The name is Smithy, and while you guys make money lining up to getting gunned down, I make it by using my talents, move stuff around to people in need.
"So smuggling," Mai said with growing anger.
"Exactly, and I'm one of the best I know, considering I got enemies everywhere. The truck was supposed to drop off at the toy store, and some connections were supposed to clear up all the debt I had piled up. But that didn't mean that every two-bit crook with a decent blaster couldn't try and appease The Don too."
"And exactly made you so special," Brandon said.
Smithy grumbled at the question, but he unfortunately relented.
"You guys probably know the mystic element has proven to do many strange and wonderful things, and I'm one of the best examples."
Smithy soon raised his hand and with a familiar golden aura that all mystic users share. From his hand, a trail of gold lighting lifted the patch of dirt from the ground towards him. Once he closed his palm, the golden lighting intensified until soon enough, he had turned the dirt into the structure of a small house.
"I call it transformation, I can take any substance in my hand it into something else; I can even combine different compounds. To make an alloy harder than steel or a crystlia so concentrated that it can pay off a debt or very rich," Smithy said in a didactic tone.
For once, knowing everything didn't make me feel any better. One by one, every attempt to move on from my past seemed to be undone, and I was back to being the same victim I was before, the same monster I was before. Stress ate away at my mind as Aphele and Mai flared their mana in anger.
"So you lied to us about the danger of this mission and made us accomplices to your crime so that you could get some cheap labor. Give me one good reason why we shouldn't beat your ass here, destroy your shipment and call the police to collect what's left?"
"Because your a hero and I'm a realist, Aphele crystilia can be as much a weapon as anything else, you blow my shipment and you looking at a cloud that could span for days, move miles and deadlier than any neurotoxin. And while you could bully me into trying to undo my crystilia, I don't think the phantom pirates are giving us a week," he said in a pompous and immovable manner.
A tense silence that lasted an eternity turned an excruciating moment into an unbeatable one as I soon had shadows steam off of my body. I saw my friends approach with silent pleads, but I just couldn't. I phase through the floor and fade into the abyss. For minutes on end, I struggled against the shadows as one by one; they chipped at my defenses. The attack only stopped when I sensed them.
"You guys can stop pretending."
"Pretending to do what, Lunaire?" said a concerned Mai.
"I know that you are pretending that you guys still want me around. Pretending that battle with Eridani meant nothing to us, that didn't divide us! When the chips were down, and we pushed to our limits, I left you guys to the Lupi while I went to get someone else to get stronger. We were a team, and I am the weak link."
I felt so pathetic that I couldn't even look them in the eye. That was until I felt a sensation that I always hated it: a hug. Mai was. First, Brandon was second, then Aphele and Mai. And in one full motion, the shadows that ate away at me finally looked at the big bad world once again and saw...nothing, no pain, no pity, no disgust. Aphele then answered my dread with a speech of his own.
"When Drippy talked to me after that battle, when I talked about how in that critical moment, I lead my team to defeat. A part of me even wanted you to lead the team instead, but Drippy told me something that I hope to carry throughout this war. In every Specialist's career, there's a time where they reach a crisis point, a time where we have no out, no chance to win. And in a scenario where most would fall into despair, we fought to our last breath and tried to make sure that at the very least, others would succeed where we did not. No one here blames you for running away, nor is anyone defining you for it because as long as we keep that experience as long as we know what it's like to fail everyone, then I know that we can handle far more than we ever fought possible. You're one of the smartest people I know Lunaire, but if you think that you can't figure this out, I at least expect you to come to us."
One by one, the shadows started to disappear until in one last attempt to take me over, they say.
"You push away everyone who gets close."
"Yeah," I thought, "And they keep coming back."
Once my darkness finally faded, my composure grew all the stronger. The walls of fact that always quelled my darkness became a resounding assurance of my capabilities, and I got to work. In the coming hour in the dead of night, I used my flawless memory and element to replicate the stigma for my uses and made its mind. With my new shadow sensory, I effectively had a combination of a motion sensor and tracker. It took a lot of my mana and time, but I was able to confuse the pirate's movements and even set up a couple of well-transformed crystilia traps, and we were set to go. After my enslavement, I had kept info on the PP's operations, and judging from the fight between them; I knew that they were at least 7 of them.
Soon enough, under the pale full moonlight, the battle began. Far from away, Deon and Smithy leveled their aim. In a combined stance, Brandon, Aphele, and Mai untied in a tight circle as a wave of darkness soon crept towards them. In an instant, the darkness soon approached them, but Mai, at full power, used her tempest shield to counter the attack! As both of them recoiled in their equal power, Smithy fired with reaction on par with lighting! Tie that with a concussive fireball, and there was already one out. Almost at consecutively, another female pirate fired a black spear straight for Brandon. But like before, Deon used his light to destroy the spear and have Brandon launch a piece of the high-grade crystalia that quickly explodes in a small purple crowd that completely turns the pirate into a sickly mess. In haste, one of the pirates used every bit of mana they had in a desperate assault while four more pirates they concentrated their darkness in an umbrage orb. Once the attacker met his end, the ball fired at full strength; my friends met the challenge.
A union of fire, wind, and I guess crystilia morphed into a jet of wild purple flames the two blasts were each in power. Smithy used a more powerful canon that reflects off four different shields to create a shockwave that they do avoid along with the jet, but unfortunately, not the fumes of the crystilia with them stunned it was only a matter of time before the rest fell. A couple of minutes of tense silence emerged as we waited for other opponents to enter our wicked web, but it truly seemed to cease as soon as it began.
In a couple of minutes, we regrouped and tied up our opponents to the authorities that were now only a couple of minutes away from arriving.
"Well, this has been nice guys and gals, but considering I've caused just enough trouble as it is, I say we come to a little arrangement. If you give those pirates over to the authorities for me, say that these crooks tried stealing an empty truck and quit while your head and your fee triples. And you never have to see my face again, which is probably for the better," he said with slime so slick I could sense.
He was about to walk away until his path was stopped by the 5 of us surrounding him. We all flared up what little power we had left as we made our stand.
"You are a bunch of stupid kids," he said regretfully.
Smithy at once morphed his gun into a sword and readied it, flaring his mana to the extreme, each second causing his sea of sin to become even stronger. And as he began to swing his sword, something miraculous happened. Like a living sonar, the endless sea little by little turned into plans, actions, and even scenarios all on their own, like cells dividing on its own. It was almost too much for me to understand until only one conclusion remained. On instinct, I used what little strength I had left to turn my shadow prison into defense as in one fluid motion; we were bombarded in a mass of gold and purple lighting!
The blast was almost too much to bear, but I still stood my ground until the bitter end. And as I kneeled exhausted to the point of unconsciousness, all I witnessed was a pained Smithy, along with my unconscious friends. As the powerful smuggler looked to me in surprise, his regretful tone grew all the louder.
"Quit while you're ahead kids, and I do mean that. This war can bring out the worst in so many, and the Rogues are no exceptions, Next time you'll get far worse than me."
And as the smuggler started to walk away with his ominous warning hanging in the air, all I could do was watch as my ears filled with the sounds of sirens, signifying a mission's end. But even though our cooling period was beginning, something tells me being a Deputy was only going to heat things all the more.